Voices in the city

Urban renewal projects in Istanbul: A locus of contestations and demonstrations

Maaike Wentink Supervisor: Dr. J. Jansen Master thesis: Cultural Anthropology & Development Sociology Leiden University, June 2014 Cover picture: Documentary screenshot Ekumenopolis 2012

Contents

Preface 2

Chapter 1 – The case of Turkey 1.1 Introduction 4 1.2 Constructing history and building a future 6 1.3 Methodology 10 1.4 Theoretical background 17

Chapter 2 – The case of Taksim 2.1 Introduction 22 2.2 Gezi Park: The home of the real ҫapulcu 24 2.3 Taksim Square area: A space of legacies and demonstrations 29 2.4 More than meets the eye 33

Chapter 3 – The case of Tophane 3.1 Introduction 35 3.2 Gentrification in Tophane 37 3.3 The silence of Tophane 40 3.4 Same symbols different meaning 44

Chapter 4 – Localising neoliberalism in Istanbul 4.1 Introduction 46 4.2 The problem of social housing 48 4.3 A global city, a local meaning 51 4.4 A city we have lost 54

Chapter 5 – Conclusion: Small places, large issues 5.1 Introduction 58 5.2 Concluding Taksim & Tophane: A sense of belonging 61

Literature list 67

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Preface

In Istanbul, the impact of globalisation and neoliberalism can be seen in a dramatic ways. While the government enables gigantic and often controversial construction projects such as, shopping malls and the so-called social mass housing projects, it seems there is a complete disappearance of poor neighbourhoods. Istanbul truly appears to be the city without limits, experiencing an unstoppable growth, and a rapidly changing skyline. As we will see in this thesis, neoliberalism can be seen as a contested phenomenon that influences society at multiple levels. On the one hand neoliberalism follows the principle of reducing state interference in the market, but does not necessarily lead to a reduction of state control over society. In this thesis I provide critical reflections on urban renewal projects in Istanbul, as government and municipal bodies are trying to upgrade the present-day city to a modern world city. I focus on two case studies, the public urban space of the Taksim area and the neighbourhood of Tophane, and I analyse them in the context of the processes of globalisation and neoliberalism. I emphasize the dynamism of urban change by showing how on the one hand top- down political agendas are pushed by global forces, and on the other hand, civic actors defend spaces in the city to which they feel attached to. By highlighting some significant historic events I explain why certain places or symbols in the urban environment are important for different social groups, and how the desire to protect these spaces and symbols led to the Gezi protests during the summer of 2013. Although many social groups were represented during the Gezi protests, not every social group sees urban renewal as a threat because it can also provides new ways of earning income. In addition, several projects are designed to stimulate tourism which creates new jobs in the tourism industry while local shop keepers can sell their product to tourists. Nevertheless, some social groups feel alienated from the place they were “born and raised” as urban renewal changes the face of the city, and other groups face eviction as neighbourhoods undergo gentrification. Therefore, many citizens are demanding influence in the decision making processes concerning urban change in order to protect what is important for them in the urban environment using narratives like citizenship and democracy. I conclude this thesis by stating that it is not the government alone that is responsible for the socially painful situation the city is currently in since urban policies are impacted by global forces. Nevertheless, citizens are calling for recognition by the

2 government that they belong to the city and need a place to live, as they simultaneously demand from the government the right to protect spaces in the city they feel attached to. Throughout this thesis I will show that urban space is not the space for conflict, but an object of struggle itself.

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Chapter 1 – The case of Istanbul

1.1 Introduction Istanbul, the biggest city in Turkey is experiencing some of the fastest changes since the beginning of its existence. The urban environment is being expanded with new structures, forcing the natural environment to step aside for (amongst other things), the many shopping malls, a third bridge over the Bosporus, a third airport and a Olympic stadium built for the Olympic games of 2020.1 The increase in the number of urban renewal projects are stimulated by policies of the ruling AK Party (Justice and Development Party) as these policies attract foreign investors and money making construction projects through a neoliberal economy.2 During these urban renewal projects symbols from different pasts are being removed or changed as an expression of political agendas and results of global processes having a deep impact on different social groups.3 During the summer of 2013, the public resistance started in response to urban development projects undertaken by Istanbul’s municipality and became world news. The resistance started peaceful against the destruction of a historically public park and urban commons, and turned into a resistance that was organized against urbanism that puts the interests of capital over the interests of the citizens of Istanbul (Kuymulu 2013: 275). As Kuymulu states: “Destroying Gezi Park for a shopping mall was packaged as part of a larger project of ‘urban transformation’ – AKP’s euphemism for gentrification – which aims to radically transform one of the most iconic urban centres in Turkey: Taksim

1 In September 2013, the Olympic committee announced that the Olympic games of 2020 were not appointed to Turkey. 2 Although many authors (Aksoy 2012; Catterall 2013; Kuyucu & Ünsal 2010) write about urban transformation in Istanbul, I speak in this thesis of urban renewal. The reason why I choose for urban renewal over urban transformation is that the word transformation implies that something is changed from the original while preserving some of its original state. In Istanbul however, most of the urban environment is being changed without the preservation of some of the original. Therefore I speak of urban renewal, which implies a replacement of a former object and seems more suitable to describe urban processes in Istanbul. 3 There are some anthropologists (see Barnard & Spencer 2002: 510-511) who use the term social structure or social organisation to refer to social groups such as nations, tribes, clans or to define the relation between individual people or the relation with one another (Barnard & Spencer 2002; Radcliffe- Brown 1940). I find it more useful to speak of (different) social groups which are in this thesis defined as such, based on their collective identities, backgrounds, place in the city or feelings concerning a specific topic (etc.). By speaking of social groups instead of social structures or social organisations I would like to emphasize feeling of collectiveness, defining these social groups and producing these social groups.

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Square” (2013: 275). Or as Göle states about the Gezi protests: “Defending a few trees in Gezi Park is not merely a pretext for political contestation. The plan to destroy this public park in order to construct a shopping mall has aroused a new critical consciousness. The Gezi Occupation Movement, reflects resistance to the extreme urban development of the past ten years” (2013: 8). In this thesis I will explain why Taksim Square is described as iconic and how a critical consciousness produced narratives like citizenship and democracy that are used by citizens to claim certain parts of the city. Due to the AK Party’s agenda of stimulating construction projects through neoliberal policies, it is tempting to see urban change in Turkey as a political or economic act alone but of course other motivations for urban change are also involved. Many projects are undertaken out of an economic perspective to stimulate tourism or are an expression of modern living standards, while the city is also developed in order to endure earthquakes. Nevertheless, more than often within urban renewal projects political statements are being made. For example, the third bridge over the Bosporus that is currently under construction is said to be presented by the AK Party government as necessary for economic growth. However, the name of the third bridge, Yavuz Sultan Selim is contested for the Alevis community living in Turkey because of the Alevis massacre that happened in 1514 under this sultan’s reign. This leads to the consequence that many Alevis prefer not to use this bridge. Therefore the third bridge may be built from an economic point of view, the project has an underground dimension that is considered highly sensitive for specific social groups because of the name it is given. The case of the third bridge is an illustration of how symbolism in urban renewal projects is of significance for different social groups, even on the subtle level of the name of a project and influences how different social groups experience or are even excluded from specific urban spaces. Istanbul’s contested story of urban renewal is not unique in the world. Hence, cities and their urban spaces have always been the domain of politics and arenas for public discourse and expressions of discontent (Low 2000: 204). For example, when rulers use public urban space to document their achievements they contribute to the face of a city through symbols that represent ideas about (national) identity that make cities into a public domain (ibid.). On its way to become a modern world city Istanbul faces a mixture of difficulties concerning processes of globalisation and neoliberalism negotiating multiple identities like European, Asian, secular, Islamic and liberal, preferring certain

5 histories over others, all of which manifested themselves in the Gezi movements of 2013.4 This makes Istanbul an ideal site to study contested politics and symbolism in urban renewal projects and the significance of the public urban environment for different social groups. In order to understand the complex dynamics concerning urban renewal in Turkey, it is necessary to address key events in Turkish history. Therefore, in the next section, I present a very brief history of Turkey, pulling out a few historical events that are of major importance for present day urban experiences.

1.2 Constructing history and building a future

Something I never expected happened, it was the same crowd of protesters that were gassed out Gezi Park yesterday [May 31th 2013] who were protesting again. And first I thought about these people, they do not look like they hate shopping malls, but still we were all standing there again. It was a cat and mouse game for three maybe four hours between protesters and police. Everybody found an apartment to hide in and we were running outside and back into the apartment to hide again. Meanwhile I was bleeding out of my eyes from the gas but the shop close by was out of lemons.5 At one point I was talking to a young man, he was around eighteen years old and I could see he was one of those thinner addicts, but he was running with us the entire night, never shouting, never yelling but running inside and outside with us and hiding in the same apartment. But then tear gas fell right in front of the apartment so I had to hide real quickly. But the tear gas came inside the house and the kid was standing right in the middle of it. I knew this kid was a thinner addict, so his lungs are damaged, therefore I carried him inside were the gas could not reach and I told him; “You had enough for today, you should not be here otherwise you are going to die, go, go home!” And he said: “I do not have a home, I do not have a

4 The process of becoming a modern world city is a desire expressed by the current government. What a modern world city exactly means is not defined by the government. However, the government does emphasize they like to increase tourism and desire to look like other “world cities” such as New York, Londen, Paris or Barcelona. 5 Lemons are used by protesters against the effects of tear gas, a mixture between lemon juice and milk naturalizes the burning sensation of skin and eyes.

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house so what can I do?” I said: “I just want you to go away, just get away from here, and go where you normally live!” And he said: “I live in Gezi Park normally…They are not going to demolish it, right?” And I said: “No, of course not!”6 7

As a respondent pointed out, Gezi Park was not so much used before, it was an abandoned park that gave shelter to addicted and homeless people.8 So why did a park that was exclusively used by homeless addicts cause so much public reaction when it faced destruction? Simply because “It is not important who goes to the park or not. There are only a few trees left in the city and we need the trees in order to breath”, as the same respondent emphasised. But of course this is not the only reason why many social groups think Gezi Park should be preserved. To understand why certain places are meaningful in Istanbul, it is necessary to have an idea of Turkish (political) history. In 1453, Istanbul was conquered by Mehmet II, later called Mehmet the Conqueror, and made Istanbul the capital of the Ottoman Empire. During that time Istanbul was still named Constantinople after Constantine the Great who made Istanbul in the year 330 the new capital of the Roman Empire. It was Mehmet II’s task to transform Istanbul as a former Christian city into the Islamic capital of the Ottoman Empire. During the centuries of the Ottoman Empire, a new palace was built, Topkapı (1459), the church of Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque (1453), and several mosques were built, for example the Suleymaniye mosque and complex in the 1550’s. During the Ottoman era, symbols of the Byzantine era were replaced by powerful symbols of Ottoman rule. The Ottoman world created a wide range of cultural products that “articulated the Ottoman responses to the Byzantine past” (Kafescioğlu 2005: 23). This makes Istanbul’s history one of many transformations. One of the last big changes of the city’s urban image started in the late nineteenth century and should be considered as on-going, as I will clarify later in this thesis. The Tanzimat (meaning: reorganisation) during the second half of the nineteenth-century of the Ottoman world meant Westernisation, and importing everything from Europe that would give a modern look to the Turkish society.

6 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 25 years old, held on 16-06-2013. 7 All respondents are kept anonymous in this research. Since many activist or protesters were arrested and prosecuted for attending Gezi related events, I do not want to take the risk of bringing anyone in danger. Therefore, I decided to keep everyone participating in my research anonymous. Hence, I also decided not to use pseudonyms to prevent any confusing concerning names or identities. 8 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 35 years old, held on 23-07-2013.

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In the nineteenth century churches were built in Istanbul on the European side which signified the freedom of religion and secularism as they stood next to mosques. In addition, a secular lifestyle in Turkey during the Republic meant that different perceptions of life could co-exist (Ardaman 2007). Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the secular Turkish Republic in 1923. Atatürk got the name Atatürk (meaning: Father of all Turks) in 1934 and it was he who “defined Turkey as an ethnically Turkish and Muslim nation and also avowedly secular” (Mills 2006: 441- 442). He introduced, among other things, the Turkish alphabet and banned speaking and writing in a non-Turkish language in public and made Ankara as the new official capital of Turkey. After the foundation of the Republic in 1923, policies of Turkification started (Mills 2006: 446). “Nationalism was provided as the new narrative, attempting to reconcile the cultural ideology to Westernisation” (Keyder 2008: 507). After Atatürk, the definition of the Turkish nation as ethnically Turkish and religiously Muslim, led to an exodus of Istanbul’s minorities between 1948 and 1965 because the very presence of Christians and Jewish minorities, as well as their ownership of property and their role in economy, contested the very definition of the nation as Turkish and Muslim (Mills 2006). The architectural legacy of the Ottoman Empire in Istanbul has been the object of complex, often contradictory practices and policies during the period of Republic (Altinyildiz 2007: 281). Caught between the urge to modernize and the preservation of the Byzantine history, acts of construction, restoration, or destruction became powerful visual manifestations of cultural politics, addressing the religious and national sentiments of the public (ibid.). Since the founding of the Republic, modernisation has been prioritised in urban renewal while the national government deals with the dilemma of determining which buildings are worthy of preservation. In addition, the creation of museums that are meant to glorify certain events or objects refer to specific meaningful histories, take for example the Historic Panorama Museum 1453 (Altinyildiz 2007; Strootman 2009). Accounting for historic transformations in preservation and urban renewal efforts, illustrates the difficulties Turkey faces when it represents its own history to itself and to the world as being a relatively new nation (founded in 1923). Contemporary Turkey is therefore interesting because it shows how national identity and a sense of belonging are created in everyday living and public spaces and how debates about identity are connected to the production of new urban landscapes (Mills 2006: 441).

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Besides national identities and different (contested) histories that are represented in the built urban environment, processes of globalisation and neoliberalism bring another dimension in urban renewal projects that are negotiated in modern Turkey. During the second half of the twentieth century Istanbul experienced a growth from one million to almost ten million inhabitants, which lead to the filling of empty spaces in the city with illegal squatter (gecekondu) housing (Keyder 2008: 511-512). At the end of the twentieth-century new globalised lifestyles decreased illegal housing when, shopping malls, gated communities and gentrified neighbourhoods became the face of current Istanbul (in chapter 4 more about globalised lifestyles and gated communities). Furthermore, new optimism for EU accession encouraged internal debates concerning national identity and stimulated future-oriented projects in attempt to upgrade the city (infrastructure, educational institutions, tourist sites, legal framework) to improve relations with Europe and the world (Keyder 2008; Mills 2006). Urban renewal trends in Istanbul signify a future that is close to European cities, with the city centre as the tourist showcase, full of restaurants, cafes and entertainment venues which can be found in the Taksim area, for example. During the Gezi protests, the government of Prime Minister Erdoğan was accused by protesters of governing the city in a nationalistic and authoritarian way because Turkish citizens experienced feelings of exclusion from the decision making process concerning urban change. Therefore different social groups, such as the groups that were represented during the Gezi protests, feel that urban renewal is being forced upon the Turkish people. This political opinion was unfolding during the Gezi protests, and jumped scale (local, urban, national, international) when it shifted its focus from claims over a specific urban space to the use of narrative like citizenship and democracy (Kuymulu 2013: 276; Catterall 2013: 421). Albeit I am aware that civil rights and individual freedom became also important issues during the Gezi protests, in this thesis I choose to focus on how different social groups experience the city and how symbolism and politics influence this experience. The study of civil rights and individual freedoms need another approach of study that I cannot offer in this thesis. Hence, I would like to suggest these topics for further research since they are nevertheless very important.

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1.3 Methodology My study consists of two complementary case studies that focus on different types of urban space; a public square and a neighbourhood located in the changing city of Istanbul. Because I researched two very different sites I used multiple research techniques depending on the situation, facing different problems concerning safety, for example. I started my project in Tophane neighbourhood, focussing on how the Turkish government is using architectural heritage in urban renewal projects to increase tourism and how these projects impact social life in this area. Research in the field taught me that it is unclear what the government defines as heritage and what their policies concerning architectural heritage are. These findings guided me to my second field of study, Taksim area. The Taksim area was during my fieldwork a place of public resistance against urban renewal projects and the converting of a public urban space (amongst other things) into a less public urban environment.9 By researching both a neighbourhood and a public urban space I had the unique opportunity to study the relationship between urban renewal projects and the impacts of these projects on social life in times of urban resistance. In addition, both case studies illustrate how urban renewal projects have different meanings for different social groups and lead to different public reactions. The theoretical question I address focuses on politics and symbolism in urban renewal projects and the significance of the public urban environment for different social groups. Hence, the research questions I like to answer in this thesis are:

1) How are politics and symbolism interconnected and represented in urban renewal projects in Istanbul? 2) How is architectural heritage being integrated and represented in urban renewal projects, and what does this mean for different social groups in Istanbul? 3) In what way do meaning of urban space influence the experience of urban space for different social groups in Istanbul?

Demarcating the field My ethnographic descriptions are based on three and half month fieldwork in Istanbul beginning in March 2013 through the end of April, continuing during the start of June through the beginning of August. In November and January 2013 I visited the field for a couple of days, focussing merely on the aftermath of the summer 2013 protests and how

9 I will demarcate the Taksim area in the following section.

10 that impacted my respondents lives. By studying the field at different times, I was able to see a variety of socio-political situations and changing social behaviours creating a sequential overview of events during a turbulent time. By having different periods of research I was able to see how social problems concerning urban redevelopment evolve, develop and change over a short time. During my research in the neighbourhood of Tophane and the Taksim area I talked to people with various social backgrounds and observed their daily social life. The two areas selected for study can be considered as complementary as they show the depth and offer the empirical variety illustrating a far range of impacts of policies concerning urban change in a public urban space and a neighbourhood. Tophane is a (closed) neighbourhood on its way to become a more public urban environment, and Taksim Square area is an urban space where street artists and musicians perform, where people come together to drink alcohol and discuss topics such as politics and football and this area faces closure as a creative and public square. Tophane is located in the district of Beyoğlu on the European side of Istanbul and is currently part of urban renewal projects which causes processes of gentrification that change social life in the neighbourhood. In addition, on December 11, 2004 the Istanbul Modern Museum was inaugurated in Tophane and this was the first of many changes in this area.10 For example, soon after the establishment of the museum, multiple art galleries were opened in the main street and changed the social character of the neighbourhood (Ammeraal 2012). As a response to these changes the neighbourhood became much more open, safer and even accessible for tourists (ibid.).

10 Istanbul Modern (2013) Istanbul modern museum accessed on 19-06-2013, http://istanbulmodern.org/en/museum/about_760.html.

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Figure 1: Istanbul and the district Beyoğlu.11

The Taksim area is also located in the district of Beyoğlu but is not a neighbourhood, it is the preeminent symbolic public urban space of Istanbul. The area, as I demarcate it, comprises Taksim Square, the next to it located Gezi Park, and the directly surrounding areas consisting out of Istiklal Caddesi (the shopping street) and its side streets. On May 31, 2013, protesters on Taksim Square where violently attacked by police forces while protesting against urban renewal projects planned for the Taksim Square area.12 During my studies at Taksim area, I learned that urban renewal projects are related to complex processes of neoliberalisation and globalisation as well as expressions of the political

11 Source: Wikimedia Commons (2009) Istanbul location Beyoğlu, accessed on 30-05-2014, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Istanbul_location_Beyo%C4%9Flu.svg?uselang=nl. 12 I speak of violent police interventions because, between March 31th 2013, and March 31th 2014 eight people lost their lives, directly in the streets of Turkey during protests or indirectly due to severe exposure to tear gas. More than eight-thousand people have been injured, including hundred-and-four people with severe head injuries and eleven people who lost an eye. During the first twenty days of protests in March 2013, Turkish police used hundred-thirty-thousand tear gas cartridges. During the protests many people were arrested, currently more than two-hundred-fifty people are facing a trial violating laws on demonstration. Source: Aljazeera (2014) Gezi Park protesters on mass trial accessed on 02-06-2014, http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2014/05/gezi-park-protesters-mass-trial-turkey- 201456181424419115.html; The Guardian (2014) A year after the protests, Gezi Park nurtures the seeds of a new Turkey accessed on 02-06-2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/29/gezi-park-year-after-protests-seeds-new-turkey; Amnesty International (2013) Turkey accused of gross human rights violations in Gezi Park protests accessed on 02-06-2014, http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/turkey-accused-gross-human-rights-violations-gezi-park- protests2013-10-02.

12 agenda of the ruling government. These projects have deep impact on different social groups and how they experience urban space. By studying both Taksim and Tophane as urban spaces in a changing city, I was able to collect a variety of empirical data which forms the basis for my ethnographic research on politics and symbolic representation in urban renewal projects, and the meaning of urban space for different social groups.

Research methods Because I studied two very different sites that provided their own challenges to overcome, I had to use different strategies for data collection. To make sure to capture as much information as possible I used four different research methods: participant observation, interviewing, handing out questionnaires and photo documentation. In the following section I will describe the research methods for both sites separately.

Figure 2: Beyoğlu district.13

13 Original image: Wikimedia Commons (2012) Location map Beyoğlu accessed on 30-05-2014, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Location_map_Beyoglu.jpg?uselang=nl.

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1. Tophane Neighbourhood Tophane neighbourhood was observed from the main public spaces, the central mosque (Kilic Ali Pasha) and park in the middle of the neighbourhood. I chose these locations because they compromise the main spot for social activity for different people living or working in Tophane. From this area I observed behavioural activities and located popular spots for social gatherings and learned from these observations how the public space in Tophane is utilized by people of different ages and genders at different times of the day. During this period I also took photos of everyday life in Tophane’s public urban spaces. After one week of observing, I got acquainted with some of the people working at the mosque and I became more involved in social life around the mosque. By this time the people of Tophane were used to seeing me, they started to become very suspicious about my intentions. Even though my friends at the mosque explained to the people of Tophane that I was there for studies, they believed I was either a spy for the CIA or the Mossad and definitely untrustworthy. Especially since I took photos of public urban spaces and non-tourist objects such as construction sites, which proved to them that my motivation were clandestine. I think that my poor understanding of the Turkish language contributed to the suspicion of the people of Tophane. When possible, I used the help of a translator but most of the time I was solely able to communicate with English speaking people. At the times I did not have access to a translator, I used Google Translate or a Turkish phrase book to communicate in a very simple way. Even though this limited the people I could interview, I do not have the feeling I missed out on important information because I also used other research methods like observation, questionnaires and photo documentation. When I started my fieldwork in Tophane I handed out questionnaires focussing on the general experience and feelings of safety of tourists and Turks concerning the neighbourhood. I was able to collect 100 questionnaires filled in by tourists visiting or staying in the neighbourhood and 100 filled in by Turks who live or work in Tophane or visit the neighbourhood regularly. For tourists I used questionnaires in English or Dutch and for Turkish respondents I had the questions translated into Turkish. My friends at the mosque helped me with handing out questionnaires to Turkish respondents and they helped me to explain the purpose of my research. The most significant questions of the questionnaire involved the general attitude towards the neighbourhood and feelings concerning safety in the neighbourhood during the day. The answers given on the

14 questionnaire were analysed using the SPSS digital analysing program and will be interpreted in chapter 3. During my second fieldwork period starting in June, I was not able to enter Tophane neighbourhood because of safety reasons. During the Gezi protests of the summer of 2013, citizens of Tophane started to believe that “outsiders” and “foreigner-powers” where causing the protests and that they were designed to over throw their beloved government. 14 In reaction to this belief the people of Tophane attacked protesters on multiple occasions with sticks and knives. Since there was already a general belief in Tophane that I was a spy for a foreign organisation I did not want to bring myself in any danger by entering the neighbourhood during the most active months of protesting. To get information about Tophane during the protests I interviewed people living in neighbouring areas or I met with people from Tophane at a neutral place outside the neighbourhood. Most interviews during that time where informal because no one dared to speak freely about the situation and therefore I could not record those particular conversations. When the protests started to calm down during the end of July I visited the neighbourhood only a couple of times to interview the people I already knew. I was able to record those interviews and it gave a good idea about general attitudes concerning urban renewal in this area. During my second fieldwork period I focussed mostly on Taksim area, and collected data about Tophane without entering the neighbourhood. According to my presumptions before conducting fieldwork, I expected tourism to be a major influence on urban renewal projects but as I learned on site, urban renewal is a much more complicated topic and is highly political. Moreover, I learned during my first fieldwork period that tourism plays a minor role in urban renewal projects while processes of neoliberalism and globalisation are major forces impacting governments leading to the stimulation of urban change. Besides that, I learned that symbolism and different political agendas are expressed through urban renewal projects in Istanbul that impacts different social groups and their experience of urban space. In this thesis I will also show how politics and symbolism are represented in urban renewal projects and how people react differently on urban renewal in a public urban space and in a neighbourhood.

14 While the people living in Tophane can be described as “inhabitants” or “residents”, I decided to speak of them as citizens because I like to emphasise that this group has equal rights in comparison with other citizens of Istanbul. The use of “inhabitants” or “residents” does not imply having rights of citizenship and seems therefore, less suitable.

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2. Taksim Area During my research at Taksim area, violent and tenuous protests took place on the square and the surrounding areas. Therefore my studies around Taksim were strongly limited due to safety concerns. As long as it was considerably safe to spend time in this area, I observed social activities in and around the square, and did informal interviews and documented what happened by taking photos. Sometimes I had help from people who could translate during interviews with Turkish speaking respondents, but most of the time I did research in Taksim alone. The biggest risk of carrying out research at the Taksim area was being mis-identified as a protester by Turkish police, which would have led to arrest and deportation. I was very careful in how I presented myself in the field. For example, I tried not to attract too much attention from local authorities and police by wearing a professional gas mask during interventions. Police interventions always started very unexpectedly and where very violent. Within a few seconds Taksim Square was filled with tear gas, armed vehicles with water cannons (water mostly mixed with pepper spray) chased the ones who could not outrun the gas fast enough, and people who intended to stay at the square where fired upon with rubber and paint bullets. Due to the suddenly occurring character of these police interventions I found myself unpredictably in the middle of such interventions. When I was taking an interview that I was allowed to record, I always used my mobile phone as voice recorder instead of a professional voice recorder. The use of a professional voice recorder could lead to a wrong identification by police as a journalist or activist documenting the events, endangering myself and my respondents. When I went to the Taksim area I always deleted previously collected data from the devices carried with me in case the police would search my belongings in the situation of arrest. During Taksim visits keeping myself and my respondents safe was always a priority. Throughout my fieldwork at the Taksim area I was able to collect unique empirical data since the massive public resistance at the Gezi protests had never been seen in Turkey before. These summer events illustrated that processes of urban renewal much more implies than the transformation of buildings alone. Hence, urban renewal is used in this thesis as an entry point to understand the full complexity concerning urban change and its relationship to the meanings of urban spaces for different social groups.

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Analysis

The methodologies I used were effective in providing a wide empirical variety of data that could be compared and analysed. The interviews, field notes, photographs, questionnaires and observations made me understand the use of urban space in Istanbul underpinning the politics and symbolic representation in urban renewal projects. This data is the basis for this thesis and the argument that urban renewal projects are not about buildings alone. Urban change is an expression of the government’s political agenda that is driven by neoliberal and global processes and has serious consequences for different social groups and their experience of the urban environment. In addition, urban change impacts not solely how different social groups experience the urban environment but it also impacts social life as the city contains people’s homes. The anthropological approach of urban renewal contributes to the making of theory about urban renewal as a highly socially, culturally and politically important topic. This approach is of significance to understand socially important issues concerning urban renewal projects in practice. Since anthropology is the study of culture, an interdisciplinary approach of urban renewal is useful since it can shed a new light on existing discourses by focussing on different aspects of urban renewal in order to understand the full complexity of the topic. By emphasizing how the topic of urban renewal is directly connected to people’s life’s, I hope to put some attention to the social and cultural aspect of the built urban environment and to raise stimulating questions for further research.

1.4 Theoretical background As Henri Lefebvre (1991; [1974]) states, the concept of space once had a strictly geometrical meaning, before scholars started to speak of “social space”.15 The space to which Lefebvre refers does not exist in itself, but is produced. For Lefebvre, space is a social construct consisting of three elements: Spatial practice, spaces of representation, and the representation of space (Lefebvre 1991). Christian Schmid (2008) explains these three complex elements identified by Lefebvre:

15 “Production de l’espace” by Henri Lefebvre is the original title of the book I refer to here and was first published in 1974. For this thesis I used the translated version “The production of space”, translated by Donald Nichelson-Smith in 1991.

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Spatial practice means focussing on the aspect of simultaneity of activities. In concrete terms one could think of networks, interaction and communication in everyday life. Space of representation concerns the symbolic dimension of space. According to this, space of representation does not refer to spaces themselves but to something else; a divine power, the logos, the state, masculine or feminine principle, and so on. This dimension of production of space refers to the process of signification that links itself to a (material) symbol. The symbols of space could be taken from nature, such as trees or prominent topographical formations; or they could be artefacts, buildings, and monuments. Architects deal with the representation of space when they deal with the production of representations. Representations of space give an image and thus also define a space (Schmid 2008: 36-37).

It is the interaction between the elements of spatial practice, spaces of representation, and the representation of space that result in the production of space (Milgrom 2008: 269). What is important in the case of Taksim is what Lefebvre describes as the element “space of representation”, the symbolic dimension of space. According to this, Taskim Square does not solely refer to itself but also to something else, for example; the state, history (Atatürk), freedom and democracy among other things. When these symbolic meanings are threatened public resistance can occur, as we have seen during the Gezi protests in Istanbul. In addition, “urban space cannot just be considered as the place where political struggles happen, but increasingly the very object of that struggle” (Elden 2004: 151). Hence, just as a battlefield is the site of conflict but also part of the territory over which conflicts are often initiated, the city plays a similar role (ibid.). Furthermore, Lefebvre (1991: 83) states that any urban space implies, contains and dissimulates, social relationships – and this despite the fact that a space is not a thing but rather a set of relations between things (objects and products). This definition corresponds with Smith and Low’s (2006: 3) explanation of public urban space as “the range of social locations offered by the street, the park, the media, the internet, the shopping mall, the United Nations, national governments, and local neighbourhoods”. However, Smith and Low (2006: 4) emphasise that public space traditionally is differentiated from private space in terms of rules and access, the source and nature of control over entry to a space, individual and collective behaviour sanctioned in specific

18 spaces, and rules of use. Whereas private space is regulated by rules of private property use, public urban space is demarcated by the state and while far from free of regulation, is generally conceived as open to greater or lesser public participation (ibid.). The contestation between private space and public urban space is especially of importance when we look at the case of Tophane neighbourhood as Tophane has been physically appropriated by its inhabitants. Tophane’s citizens conceive of it as a private space or semi-public space. It has its own regulated rules and terms of access and while there is no gate closing the neighbourhood, outsiders are kept away as much as possible. Foreigners and non-Tophane citizens are repulsed by efforts to keep the neighbourhood private.16 I will illustrate this closed atmosphere with an anecdote from a respondent, living in Tophane.

Tophane has their own security system that is why the neighbourhood is so closed. But I live alone so it is also some sort of security for me too. They [the youngsters] control Tophane and a bit of the surrounding areas and they do not want any foreigners there. For example, when I first moved to my apartment in the mahalle (best translated as district but mahalle also indicates a private sphere) some of my friends came to visit, but they could not find my house. So one of the young people from Tophane came to ask what they are looking for: “You are not from our neighbourhood so what are you looking for?” So they said that one of their friends moved to the mahalle and they wanted to visit her. The young Tophane inhabitant said: “The girl with the long blond hair? She is living there.” So everybody knows. It is not always pleasant but they have some sort of protected community.17

Due to an increase in tourism and urban renewal projects, Tophane neighbourhood has to become more open, which brings up the discourse between the centre and the periphery, as I will explain next. By opening Tophane up, the neighbourhood will become part of Istanbul’s city centre and consequently be part of the discourse identified by Lefebvre (1991) as “the right to the city”. For Lefebvre, “the call for a right to the city is

16 Private might not be the correct word to describe a neighbourhood since a neighbourhood can never be completely private. However, citizens of Tophane try to stay away from the city around them and prefer only to interact with people from their neighbourhood. This creates feelings of being “private” in a neighbourhood. 17 Interview with a Turkish respondent, held on 27-07-2013.

19 the call is a right to centrality” (Elden 2004: 151). But what happens when the call for a right to the city means a right to the periphery, as is the case in Tophane? The citizens of Tophane do not want to be part of the centre, they prefer to stay in the periphery of Beyoğlu where they can keep their private living environment. As Prigge (2008: 53) explains, the ideologies of urban space that are produced by specialists of space (architects, urban planners, geographers, urban sociologists) are represented in the urban environment. This means that “in the discipline and political technologies of city building, modern space, its form and possibilities of use become part of discursive formations” (ibid.). Through their mechanism of exclusion (who has the right to speak about space?), they (specialists of space) formulate the dominant ways of representing and exercising power over space (ibid.). For Tophane citizens this means that they are excluded from the right to speak about, what they consider to be their private space, and are forced to be included to the right to centrality. The Tophane case illustrates what Lefebvre emphasises as, “urban spaces are the products of an activity which involves the economic and technical realms but which extends well beyond them, for these are also political products, and strategic spaces” (Lefebvre 1991: 84). Tophane is in this sense a strategic space that will be subjected to economic activity in the form of tourism. So perhaps we can conclude that there is a difference between “users” of space and “producers” of space and that they have very different agendas concerning urban space. “The producers of space have always acted in accordance with a representation, while the “users” of space passively experience whatever was imposed upon them inasmuch as it was more or less thoroughly inserted into, or justified by their representational space” (Lefebvre 1991: 43). If architects (and urban planners) do indeed have a representation of space, whence does it derive? Whose interests are served when it becomes “operational”? As to whether or not “citizens” possess a representational space, if we arrive at an affirmative answer, we shall be well on the way to dispelling a curious misunderstanding (which is not to say that this misunderstanding will disappear in social and political practice) (Lefebvre 1991: 44). This shows once again that “space is not the place of conflict, but an object of struggle itself” (Guterman & Lefebvre [1936] in Elden 2004: 184). There is therefore work to be done on establishing an understanding of urban space and how it is socially constructed and used as a political product in a world of globalisation and increasing

20 neoliberalism (ibid.). If social power is symbolized in the appropriation of space, the significance of such spatialisation is revealed only through the analysis of these relations as relations of meaning (Prigge 2008: 48). For that reason, I will focus in chapter 2 and three on politics and symbolism in urban renewal projects and the significance of the public urban environment for different social groups. In chapter 4 I will show what it means to live in a city that is subjected to so many urban changes and how this results in narratives of citizenship and democracy in the decision making process concerning urban change. In chapter 5 I will conclude this thesis by emphasizing what it means to belong to Istanbul.

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Chapter 2 – The case of Taksim 2.1 Introduction

This [AK-Party] government stands out with all the construction projects they build, and they are all for friends, family and relatives. The buildings they build and destroy are symbols. Take for example the AKM [Atatürk culture house], they know what it means. They destroy the symbols, one by one. Who are for example the architects of the buildings they destroy? They are Greek or Armenian, the government knows that and they are trying to destroy their heritage.18

For many Istanbul citizens, Gezi Park signifies the physicality of the public sphere, it is the concrete space, open space for citizens to manifest themselves (Göle 2013: 9). The Gezi movement claims that it is protecting this urban space from commercialisation by the state and the change of urban life as merely a way to generate income from rent (ibid.). Furthermore, urban spaces like Taksim are important for civic expression but also for everyday urban life where daily interactions, economic exchanges, and informal conversations occur, creating a socially meaningful place in the centre of the city (Low 2000: 33). The way an urban space physically looks is part of a “dynamic based on aesthetic, political and social aspects that changes in response to both personal action and broader socio-political and global forces” (Low 2000: 33). This dynamic creates a contested meaning of space but also use of space. For example: “When manifested protests threatens the state, public space is closed – sometimes gated – and policed to discourage use by ‘undesirables’” (Low 2000: 201). These undesirables mentioned by Low are in the case of the Gezi resistance called ҫapulcu (meaning: looters, thugs, scum) by Prime Minister Erdoğan, when he refers to Gezi Park activists.19 Göle (2013) emphasizes that the Gezi movement brought to our attention the urban space as a way of enhancing and staging democracy as part of everyday practices of

18 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 31 years old, held on 27-06-2013. 19 For more information about the use of the term ҫapulcu: “just a few looters”: Turkish PM Erdoğan dismisses protesters as thousands occupy Istanbul’s Taksim Square (2013) The Independent accessed on 05-03-2014, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/; Turkish protesters embrace Erdoğan insult and start “capuling” craze (2013) The Guardian accessed on 05-03-2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/10/; Turkish Prime Minister calling the protesters looters (2013) CNN i report accessed on 05-03-2013, http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-982851.

22 citizens. However, for the government, it is not only the public sphere but also the public order that matters (Göle 2013: 13). Keeping the meaning of the term ҫapulcu in mind, – Göle is correct in reaching this conclusion. Furthermore, when the government uses expressions like ҫapulcu, it offends the public and distracts them from initial reasons to protest, which makes the Gezi protests complex on so many different social levels. Hence, it is too complex to discuss every aspect in detail in this thesis. As Low (2000: 33) emphasizes, the way an urban space looks is part of social and political aspects that are part of global and neoliberal forces. Neoliberalism means a diminution of the state and its disengagement from the terrain of economic activities that are part of broader forces like globalisation (Elyachar 2002: 496). However, as Geschiere (2011: 191) rightfully emphasizes neoliberalism implies the reducing of interference by the state on the market, as the state exercises at the same time almost total control over society, which makes the state in a neoliberal society even more visible in everyday life. In addition he defines neoliberalism as a fuzzy phenomenon by having the surprising combination of opposite effects on the market and society (ibid.). Hence, neoliberalism in Turkey should be understood as the government creating a liberal economic environment for (foreign) investors to benefit from as they can easily start a business and make money, while society is controlled and regulated as they have little influence on the impact of neoliberalism. Globalisation can be described as a world where borders and boundaries have become increasingly porous (Inda & Rosaldo 2008: 4). In addition, globalisation refers to the intensification of global interconnectedness, suggesting a world full of movement and mixture, or cultural flow – respectively, of capital, people, commodities, images, and ideologies – through which the spaces of the globe are becoming increasingly intertwined (Inda & Rosaldo 2008: 4). The question is therefore, what is really at state with urban renewal in Turkey? Are urban renewal projects a unique showcase of the AK- Party government interpreted by activists? Or is urban renewal in Istanbul historically embedded and a reaction to global processes? As one of my respondents rightfully emphasized during an interview:

At one point we were like, the AKP is really good, but what went wrong? Why does this [demolishing of Taksim] suddenly happen? Rather than, maybe we were wrong. Maybe we were wrong about the AKP from the beginning. At some point Erdoğan had some sort of seizure or something

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went wrong. Democracy was going so well, and then for some reason, and nobody knows why... But it is not like that. If you look at it carefully, you can see little laws, little things, step by step. This is a logical outcome from the beginning.20

2.2 Gezi Park: The home of the real ҫapulcu As I already mentioned above, Gezi Park was not an important park for daily social life except for marginalised groups such as homeless people and drug addicts. It was a park where many people would not even feel safe visiting. When the protests started in May 2013, was it solely about the preservation of a few trees? No, it was about what the trees stand for, a complex mixture of symbols from different pasts, histories and identities that are part of urban memories and faced destruction through urban renewal projects. In the following section I will explore the origin of these urban memories and their meaning for different social groups. Henri Prost was given the task to redevelop Istanbul into a modern city between 1936 and 1951 (Bilsel 2007: 99). The first two years of his redevelopments plans he was appointed by Atatürk and he did the rest of his work in Istanbul for the Republican Peoples Party (CHP) founded by Atatürk (ibid.). It was Prost’s plan to transform the historic city into a secular, civilized, European city that should also improve living conditions for women (Yildrim 2012: 3). The building of new public spaces had great significance for the national history when Prost chose to reject the Islamic Ottoman past and emphasized the Greco-Roman and Byzantine past (ibid.). The military barracks at Taksim (aka Halil Pasha Artillery Barracks) that were built in 1806 under the reign of Selim III, were demolished in 1940 after being a football stadium since 1921 (ibid.). The building of Gezi Park at the former location of the military barracks was completed in 1943 and opened under the name İnönü Esplanade, after the second Turkish president İsmet İnönü (president between 1938-1950 representing CHP) (ibid.). This short historical background shows that Gezi Park has always been a historical and contested place where one “past” has been chosen over another. Currently the park is a legacy of Atatürk, and signifies the Republican secular history. During the summer

20 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 36 years old, held on 27-06-2013.

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2013 protests, activists pointed out that the AK-Party government is destroying what Atatürk’s legacy stands for, and not just a park or a building.

The government is demolishing a Republican park and reconstructing the Ottoman barracks, the Ottoman heritage is considered more important than the Republican.21 And: The government insists on rebuilding the barracks, but they want to make it into a shopping mall that looks like those barracks. Symbolically they want to reconstruct the Ottoman Empire buildings and destroy all the symbols of the Republic.22

So why does it seem that the current government values the Ottoman history over the Republican heritage? To explain why one history is valued over another is difficult because, history cannot be appreciated equally. Therefore, for the purpose of this thesis, I try to understand the symbolic meaning of different pasts through the eyes of my respondents, in spite of their opinion being the truth. Hence, my respondent’s opinion is a reason to protest in the streets, which makes their beliefs real and therefore important for me as a researcher, in order to understand the social significance of urban space. During almost every interview, respondents emphasized a tension between secular lifestyles that are related to Kemalism and Islamic lifestyles that are associated with the current AK Party government. These different lifestyles are important to understand how different social groups appreciate the urban environment as a representation of various pasts. As one of my respondents clearly explained:

When the secular Republic was founded, Atatürk tried to change the lifestyles of people who were living in an Islamic kind of way. So this group claimed that they were oppressed under Atatürk because they wanted to live in an Islamic way.23

Another respondent said the following concerning the tension between secular and Islamic lifestyles:

The Kemalists are protesting because Erdoğan called Atatürk a drunkard. Erdoğan said: “You accept a drunkard as a leader, but you do not accept the

21 Interview with Turkish respondent, 29 years old, held on 29-06-2013. 22 Interview with Turkish respondent, 35 years old, held on 23-07-2013. 23 Interview with Turkish respondent, 35 years old, held on 23-07-2013.

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rules sent by God”. And that is not a smart thing to say to Kemalists, considering that the Kemalists are still strong, CHP is about 25%. There are lots of people who still love Atatürk, even within other parties.24

This shows how Atatürk, even long after his death, still plays an important role in present-day Turkey. Atatürk’s architectural legacy is visible in many places in Turkey and treasured by many people, because of what those buildings and places symbolize. The demolishing of Atatürk’s architectural legacy is therefore considered as a direct attack to a secular lifestyles and an act towards Islamic conservatism when Islamic symbols are being integrated in the urban environment. Especially when the demolishing of a building of the Republican time goes hand-in-hand with the reconstruction of a building from the Ottoman time – as is the case with Gezi Park – it leads to conflicts.

Figure 3: Gezi Park.25

24 Interview with Turkish respondent, 25 years old, held on 15-06-2013. 25 Source: A record of Taksim Gezi Park protest meetings (2013) Show this content accessed on 06-03-2013, http://showdiscontent.com/archive/gezi-parki/2013-05-27,28,29/.

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Figure 4: Projected recreation of the Ottoman barracks.26

In the picture above you can see Gezi Park as it was originally designed by Henri Prost in 1943 (figure 3), and in the next figure (figure 4) you can see an animated image of how the new Gezi Park including the reconstructed military barracks should look like. Another issue that is at stake concerning the urban renewal plans for Gezi Park is that one historical site has to be demolished in order to rebuild another. As one respondent, who is active in a heritage preservation organisation explained:

Gezi Park is already listed as national heritage because of its historic design, but the government tried to put the military barracks also on the heritage list. But you cannot list a building that does not exist. Besides this, academically seen we do not even have enough data to reconstruct the barracks.27

26 Source: Topçu Kışlası projesi iptal! (2013) Radikal accessed on 03-07-2013, http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/topcu_kislasi_projesi_iptal-1140195. 27 Interview with Turkish respondent, 29 years old, held on 29-06-2013.

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In the end of 2012 the AK-Party government started with the controversial Taksim renovation plans known as “Taksim Pedestrian Project”.28 Short after the start of the project, the major of Istanbul, Kadir Topbaş, announced that a shopping mall would be built at the location of Gezi Park (ibid.). During the protests of the summer of 2013, my respondents explained that the plans for Taksim changed so often that they lost track of them. First, at the location of Gezi Park a shopping mall would be built, then the military barracks would be rebuilt around the park with inside a shopping mall, in the end the military barracks would be reconstructed into a museum. In addition:

The chamber of architects took the Taksim plans to court, and the plans were cancelled. But now the cancellation has be cancelled by another court… I cannot explain it but somehow the government will continue with their plans, I think. 29

The combination between the perceived attack on secular lifestyles and the feeling of powerlessness gave many citizens of Turkey the urge to protect symbols in the urban environment that they consider as valuable. The demolishing of the Emek Theatre – the oldest cinema of Istanbul that dates back to the days of Atatürk’s rule – was yet another catalyst for the Gezi resistance. Thousands of people felt inspired to protect what was meaningful for them in the city.30

We had tried everything we could, we signed all internet campaign’s concerned with urban planning and architectural heritage. From the chamber of architects, to world engineers and Europa Nostra, we wrote letters, but the government does not care about it.31 The only thing you have left is your body, to stand in the street in street and shout.32

28 Time line of Gezi Park protests (2013) Hurriyet daily news accessed on 06-06-2013, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/timeline-of-gezi-park-protests- .aspx?pageID=238&nID=48321&NewsCatID=341. 29 Interview with Turkish respondent, 35 years old, held on 23-07-2013. 30 Turkey’s historic Emek theatre facing final curtain (2013) The Guardian accessed on 15-04-2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/apr/15/turkey-historic-emek-theatre-final-curtain. 31 Europa Nostra represents a rapidly growing citizens movement for the safeguarding of Europa’s cultural and natural heritage. For more information: http://www.europanostra.org/. 32 Interview with Turkish respondent, 29 years old, held on 29-06-2013.

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2.3 Taksim Square area: A space of legacies and demonstrations Taksim means “division” or “distribution”, the name derived from the water distribution chamber located there in the Ottoman time. It was only in 1926 that Taksim was converted into Istanbul’s first public square with the first Republican monument, a statue of Atatürk (Baykan & Hatuka 2010: 55). The square gained national importance after the incident on the first of May 1977, later referred to as the Taksim Square Massacre. On May 1, 1977 – International Labour Day – some estimated 400,000 people from different backgrounds (independent unions, teachers, lawyers, doctors, women’s associations etc.) marched to Taksim for a city-wide demonstration demanding economic and democratic rights (ibid.). During a one-minute silence in respect of the memory of those who lost their lives in the struggle for workers’ rights, someone fired a gun (ibid.). The celebration ended in a tragedy with between thirty and forty mortally wounded and hundreds of casualties (the exact number of casualties still have not been identified) and the persons responsible never have been detected or prosecuted.33 The May Day incident caused restrictions on mass protests to follow, and Taksim Square was not used for May Day celebrations until 2011. In 2011 police forces stayed away from Taksim and gave space for a glorious celebration, however in the following years, May Day lead again to police clashes.34 The memories and associations of May 1, 1977 changed the meaning of Taksim Square because Taksim remembered people what happened in that space at that time, the incident of May 1 became locked in the collective-memory of many, mostly leftist Turkish citizens (Baykan & Hatuka 2010: 63). This shows us how Taksim, as a public urban space, historically embodies civil protests and social resistance while at the same time it signifies artistic desires of its designers and the economic and investment goals of its founders (Low 2000: 186). The Atatürk Culture House (AKM) located at Taksim Square is a symbolically important building, built in the nineteenth sixties and is part of Taksim area. In 2010 the major of Istanbul, Kadir Topbaş announced that the AKM would be renovated making the AKM a prestigious opera house, a cultural centre – with a parking garage – that the Turkish people could feel proud of (Aksoy 2012: 103). These renovation plans were a

33 Turkey’s bloody 1977 May Day still clouded in mystery (2003) World Socialist Web Site accessed on 12- 03-2013, http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/05/turk-m01.html. 34 Istanbul celebrates glorious May Day in Taksim Square (2011) Hurriyet Daily News accessed on 12-03- 2013, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&n=glorious-may-day-in-taksim- square-2011-05-01.

29 direct consequence of Istanbul becoming the European Capital of Culture in 2010, which led to the plan to renew and restore everything in the service for the tourism industry (ibid.). As Prime Minister Erdoğan in 2010 declared “The aim is to attract ten million tourists a year to Istanbul” (in Aksoy 2012: 103).

Figure 5: Haydarpaşa train station Istanbul.35

Even though the initial plan to finish the renovations of the AKM was set in 2010, it is currently (spring 2014) still closed and, on the top of that, new plans speak of demolishing the AKM instead of renovating it. The reason why specifically the AKM faces changes and not the surrounding old buildings is explained by my respondents in a similar way as the governmental decision for the demolishing of Gezi Park. The AKM is also considered to be a symbol of the Republic era as it is built during the Republic and it carries Atatürk’s name. However, during the summer of 2013 protests, after the police ended the occupation of Taksim Square and Gezi Park by protesters, a huge flag of Atatürk was hang on the AKM by the police. This clear symbolic statement of the government was by one of my respondents explained as:

When the government put the flag of Atatürk on the AKM they were saying that they care more about Atatürk then we do. It was more like silencing us. If you think you care about Atatürk, we care more.36

35 Photo by by Maaike Wentink 01-08-2013. 36 Interview with Turkish respondent, 29 years old, held on 29-06-2013.

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Figure 6: The AKM (left); Figure 7: Protester at Taksim (right).37

The incident with the flag of Atatürk on the AKM illustrates how the symbolic meaning of a building is being acknowledged and emphasized by the government. However, the AKM does not solely embody a specific part of history, for many social groups it also signifies the ideology of a secular lifestyle. As Lefebvre emphasizes: “What is an ideology without a space to which it refers, a space which it describes, whose vocabulary and links it makes use of, and whose code it embodies” (Lefebvre 1991: 44)? The case of the AKM shows that heritage means different things to different people, even within the same culture as was already emphasized by Gillman (2006: 65). The legacy of the secular Republic and the urban renewal plans of the ruling AK-Party government therefore create tension because the legacy of the Republic means different things to different social groups. The process of urban renewal projects in Turkey can be related to a contemporary form of “iconoclasm”. Iconoclasm, literally means “image-breaking” and is “historically associated with the veneration of religious symbols but can presently also include the example of one political regime erasing the images of another” (Harrison 2010: 164- 165). Iconoclasm is a process by which people acknowledge the connection between objects and places and collective memory (ibid.). The destruction or removal of those objects is not only a destructive practice but also an attempt to create a new collective memory (ibid.). The use of the term iconoclasm alone might produce a too biased

37 Photos by Maaike Wentink, June 2013.

31 approached of urban renewal projects in Istanbul. However, when we link this concept to ideas of Lefebvre it could contribute to our understanding of urban change in Istanbul. Lefebvre states: “The state and each of its constituent institutions call for spaces – but spaces which they can organize according to their specific requirements” (1991: 85). These requirements could in the case of Istanbul be related to a contemporary form of iconoclasm when the government acknowledges the connection between meaning and object (space) and replaces specific symbols with other symbols. An example of this process can be found in the plans to demolish the AKM and replace it with the construction of a mosque at Taksim Square, understanding the symbolic meaning of the AKM and the religious meaning of a mosque.

They are going to build a mosque where the old theatre [the AKM] used to be and across the mosque is a church, and that is going to demonstrate how tolerant we [the government] are. But by doing that, you take away the purpose of the square as it is now, a party area, as you cannot drink or sell alcohol close to a mosque. They are planning to make it into some sort of Islam-Disneyfied space that is going to be good for their own people and for tourists. It is not going to have this crazy nightlife feeling. They do not want drinking in the streets, Taksim is going to be all under control.38

Taksim Square area as a symbol of the secular Republic, staging secular lifestyles that includes drinking alcohol in public will be “de-secularised” with the building of a mosque since drinking alcohol near a mosque is forbidden by law. Iconoclasm in this case can also refer to other value judgements when secular objects are being replaced for religious objects that contribute to the manipulation of the meaning of an urban space and helps to create a new collective identity. However, it would be wrong to speak of processes of iconoclasm solely in the case of Istanbul. Urban renewal in Turkey is a much more complicated than this, as I will further explain in the next section.

38 Interview with Turkish respondent, 36 years old, held on 27-06-2013.

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2.4 More than meets the eye When protesters took the streets in Istanbul and many other cities in Turkey during the summer of 2013, activists claimed that the Prime Minister from the ruling AK-Party adopted an increasingly authoritarian attitude that threatens secular lifestyles and the public urban environment. However, as I already have mentioned above in this thesis, Prime Minister Erdoğan is not the first leader who attempted to remake the face of Turkey. This is important to remember since many social groups use nostalgic feelings about the past as narratives for the future: for example, the nostalgia for Atatürk’s secularism, or the AK-Party’s glorification of the Ottoman past.39 While these are important components in understanding the current situation of Istanbul, we should realize that the Gezi protests are not about the “past”; they are about the future. However, both nostalgic feelings for Atatürk and Ottoman times look back on authoritarian regimes which, – as I will clarify later in this thesis –, are neither credible as political models for a democratic present and future. Nevertheless, many citizens of Istanbul are unhappy with their lives and their place in the city and started a public resistance against social polarisation and police violence. Hence, the problem of urban renewal projects in Turkey should not exclusively be seen as a struggle between AK-Party ideologies and Republic secularism, but also as a complex mix between different agendas and global processes. Therefore, it would be useful to think about new ways of including citizens in the decision making processes concerning urban change, or as one of my respondents emphasized; “People are uprising against the attitude of Erdoğan. We are sick of being outsiders in our own country, we are citizens of Turkey.”40 In other words, citizens are calling for recognition by the government that they belong in the city and need a place to live. However, Turkey is part of a global world and accordingly subjective to global processes as neoliberalism which means that the government is not the only factor in the decision making process, concerning urban change. In the next chapter I will look at the case of Tophane to show how urban renewal projects are influencing daily life in a small neighbourhood and how these projects have different impacts on a neighbourhood than on a public urban space. Furthermore, I will

39 Feelings of nostalgia, in this case, are connecting to notions of value concerning cultural heritage. As heritage has its roots in the past, it continues to be meaningful to contemporary people. In this regard, heritage transcends time, drawing on the past to create a present, to be protected for the future (Dennison 2011: 18). 40 Interview with Turkish respondent, 25 years old, held on 15-06-2013.

33 look at the question of why the symbols that are at stake in Taksim have a very different meaning in Tophane and are related to very different social behaviours. In addition, people from Tophane remain opposed to Gezi resistance while their neighbourhood faces massive urban change. In the next chapter, I will look at the question why Tophane people were not protesting urban change in their neighbourhood.

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Chapter 3 – The case of Tophane

3.1 Introduction A significant social consequence of urban renewal projects in Turkey is gentrification, a process that occurs in many neighbourhoods in Istanbul. Gentrification means the “urban regeneration”, renovation, and restoration of low-income residencies leading to displacement of working-class residents from urban centres (Smith 2002; Newman & Wyly 2006). A reason why many neighbourhoods are being gentrified in Istanbul has to do with a plan made in 2009 to “make Istanbul a knowledgeable society that is able to compete globally, with high standards of living” (Aksoy 2012: 98). With this plan the Istanbul Metropolitan Planning office (IMP) will structurally transform the city. The goal is to reinvent Istanbul's urban profile in order to attract investment and promote globalised economic development (Aksoy 2012: 99). In other words, these plans mean, gentrification, social segregation or simply losing your house because the government prefers to upgrade your neighbourhood for the new (upper) middle class. Tophane is one of the many neighbourhoods that are being gentrified. Citizens are well aware of the governmental urban renewal plans and feel ambiguous about the changes in their neighbourhood. On the one hand they can profit financially from an increase in tourism when their neighbourhood becomes more attractive and benefit from improvements concerning safety when old buildings and streets are being renovated. But on the other hand, tenants are afraid that due to urban renewal, the rent of their house will increase, and if they cannot afford it, they are forced to leave Tophane. One example of forced gentrification due to urban renewal can be found in informal housing areas called gecekondus. Gecekondus are inner-city shantytowns and are particularly attractive for urban redevelopment for two reasons: legal ambiguities involving property rights and their perceived status as centres of crime, blight and decay (Kuyucu & Ünsal 2010: 6). Sulukule is an example of a Gecekondus that was completely removed to make room for a mass-housing programme initiated by TOKI (The Governmental Mass Housing Administration). Owing to the urban renewal law (No. 5366) property owners who do not agree to take part in a proposal project can be expropriated, which happened to the people of Sulukule (Aksoy 2012: 105). Property owners in this informal neighbourhood where offered entitlement within the new

35 project under the condition that they would pay the difference in value between the current value of their house and the one they will receive in the new project (Karaman 2008: 523). Unfortunately, the Roma-community living in this area does not have regular jobs and are extremely poor, which makes it impossible for them to participate in the project. Urban redevelopment projects like this therefore lead to enforced gentrification of the inner-city which, as the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IMM) states: “Is necessary for Istanbul's global future” (Karaman 2008: 518). Besides the 2009 plan made by the IMP, another reason for gentrification can be found. As I stated above, after Istanbul became European Capital of Culture in 2010, the plan was formulated to maximise Istanbul's outstanding potential in culture and tourism (Aksoy 2012: 102). Prime Minister Erdoğan made a plea about this plan: “There are elements making Istanbul ugly, elements that harm and even destroy our historic values, our cultural assets. These now need to be removed, and this requires serious media support. If there is sympathy with these [elements], if they are protected, than it would be difficult for us to carry on with our job” (2010 in Aksoy 2012: 104). These plans, however, lack any form of social projects and economic programmes for the citizens living in “ugly elements” as for example Sulukule or Tophane. The fact that urban renewal projects exist is, for many Turkish citizens, not the real problem. In neighbourhoods like Sulukule and Tophane, the problem is that renewal projects lack any form of transparency and participation of citizens, community groups and non-governmental organisations (NGO's) in the decision making process (Karaman: 2008: 520). Furthermore, since urban change creates a serious risk of forced gentrification, relocation of citizens and poverty are a consequence. Therefore, I argue that many urban renewal projects in Istanbul are not designed to improve inhabitant's living conditions but are a result of processes of globalisation and neoliberalism that intend to focus on economic advancement or exclusion of “unwanted” social groups from the city. Through the case of the Taksim area and Tophane neighbourhood I show that urban renewal in Istanbul is a product of global processes that is being channelled by the political agenda of the ruling government that impacts different social groups in how they experience the city. However, the way people deal with urban renewal projects in Tophane is in many ways different than we have seen in the case of Taksim. Therefore, in the next section I focus on Tophane concerning the symbolic meaning and consequences

36 of urban change in a neighbourhood. I will show how urban renewal has different impacts on a neighbourhood than on a public urban space.

3.2 Gentrification in Tophane During one of my interviews in Tophane in April 2013, a respondent told me how this person moved to the neighbourhood as a young child in the early 1980s.41 This respondent told me that his father bought a building in the main street about thirty years ago to start a small business. He bought the house in Tophane because it was a neighbourhood he could afford living in, not because he particularly liked the area. For his child it was not an easy place to grow up. It could not play in the streets unattended and it was unthinkable to go out at night alone. This respondent described how there were a lot of people doing drugs in the area and that it sometimes felt as a meeting point of criminals. This description of Tophane corresponds with the urban legends Pelin Tan writes about in her article regarding the neighbourhood (Tan 2007: 484). These urban legends contain stories about murder and robbery and how prostitution and drugs were unavoidable. The article emphasises the difficulties the people of Tophane had to face in daily life. In spite of this tough life, my respondent never even considered leaving the neighbourhood. This person learned at a young age how to adapt to live in Tophane, where to go and where not to go, how to behave and what to wear. Still, when this respondent looks back to the time they moved to Tophane, a lot of things changed, this respondent recounts how much had changed, especially the last 6-7 years. On December, 11 2004 the Istanbul Modern Museum was inaugurated in Tophane and this was, as my respondent explained, the first of many changes in this neighbourhood.42 Soon after the establishment of the museum, multiple art galleries were opened in the main street changing the character of the neighbourhood. As a response to these changes the neighbourhood became more open, safer and even accessible for tourists. Currently, tourism can even be considered as an important source of income for the citizens of Tophane. In addition, the old harbour is going to be renewed as part of the Galataport Project, and made open for cruise-ships in order for

41 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 40 years old, held on 04-24-2013. 39 Istanbul Modern (2013) Istanbul Modern Museum accessed on 19-06-2013, http://www.istanbulmodern.org/en/museum/about_760.html.

37 tourists to walk from the harbour up the main street of Tophane connecting to the tourist area of Taksim (see figure 2) (Ammeraal 2012: 32). Although the citizens of Tophane are now-a-days profiting from tourism, the changes in the neighbourhood did not come easily. For example, the riots sparked by the opening of an art gallery are not yet forgotten. During a 2010 art-walk that proceeded through different galleries in Tophane, citizens of Tophane attacked visitors and gallery owners (Schuitema 2012: 30). These attacks were a reaction to the feared impact of social polarisation which can be described as an effect of gentrification that impacts many neighbourhoods in Istanbul. In Istanbul there are many examples like Sulukule, in which forced gentrification led to dispossession, displacement and relocation. Therefore the fear people have in Tophane can be seen as a legitimate one because they have seen the results of gentrification in other neighbourhoods. Tarlabaşɪ, a neighbourhood not far from Tophane, is another example of forced gentrification. Tarlabaşɪ turned after two major incidents into radical dereliction and “ghettoization”; the deportation of its non-Muslim citizens in 1964 that made room for poor migrants from East-Turkey and the demolition of more than three hundred Levantine buildings for the construction of today's Tarlabaşɪ Boulevard (Kuyucu & Ünsal 2010: 8). This led to a “slummification” of the neigh- bourhood that by the mid-1990s had become a low cost living zone for internally displaced Kurds (Kuyucu & Ünsal 2010: 8). Without concerning the opinion of any of the citizens, Tarlabaşɪ became part of an urban renewal project to “upgrade” the neighbourhood that led to dispossession and displacement.

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Figure 8: Gentrification project in Tarlabaşɪ.43

Gentrification processes in Tophane are currently less severe than the examples from Tarlabaşɪ and Sulukule, as I will explain in the following sections. Nevertheless, I think gentrification can be a serious problem in the near future, if the rent in Tophane increases. As one of the tenants in Tophane states “People are angry with the establishment of the art galleries in our neighbourhood because we think this will increase the rent of our homes” (Tayfun in Schuitma 2012: 30). Conversely, the first indicators of gentrification in Tophane, were related to the art galleries that are products of bottom-up initiatives, done without any governmental influence. Although the promoter for these initiatives was the Istanbul Modern Museum, works with the local government, the galleries in Tophane are initiatives by citizens.44 Why did these bottom- up initiatives make many citizens of Tophane angry, yet why were they later on opposed to the summer protests of 2013 which were also concerned with urban change? One of my respondents explained that the establishment of art galleries were not the real problem. The problem was the “new people” who are visiting the galleries, and how they live their lives.45 The drinking of alcohol in public and wearing shorts and T- shirts is not accepted by the “more traditional” people of Tophane. Gentrification in

43 Gentrification projects in Tarlabaşɪ, notice the Caucasian couple and the bike instead of cars in the reconstructed street. Source: Jadde-Ye-Kabir (2012) Tarlabaşɪ I accessed on 21-03-2014, http://jaddeyekabir.com/page/18/. 44 Istanbul Modern (2013) Istanbul modern museum accessed on 19-06-2013, http://istanbulmodern.org/en/museum/about_760.html. 45 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 40 years old, held on 28-06-2013.

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Tophane therefore differs from gentrification in Tarlabaşɪ and Sulukule because it is not (yet) very visible through urban changes, but in changes of social life. This also explains partly why the citizens of Tophane were not active in the Gezi resistance. Citizens in Tophane are opposed to the neighbourhood becoming a more public area and are in favour of making the surrounding areas less public too. While the Gezi resistance fought to keep Taksim a public space and tried to protect the symbolic meaning of this urban space. Besides that, the biggest change in Tophane will be the Galataport Project (more about this project in the next section), which is initiated by the government, and many people in Tophane support the AK-Party government and do not doubt the usefulness of government projects.46 In the next paragraph I will have a closer look at the question why Tophane was silent during the summer 2013 protests.

3.3 The silence of Tophane Tophane is facing an urban renewal plan called the Galataport Project. With this project the harbour will be opened for cruise-ships and thousands of tourists will walk from the Tophane port, through the neighbourhood, to the tourist area of Taksim. This project will cause further gentrification of the neighbourhood when the increase of tourism causes the “revitalisation” or urban change of the area to make it more attractive. Hence, the tourists' perception, desires, and concerns will therefore probably guide municipalities and IMP to change Tophane which shows that tourism is of influence on urban planning (Teo & Huang 1995: 593). However, the citizens of Tophane do not seem to resist the Galataport Project like they resisted against the art galleries many years ago, even though this project will change the face of their neighbourhood even more. Have the citizens of Tophane forgotten what happened in the neighbourhoods as Tarlabaşɪ and Sulukule and do they no longer fear forced gentrification? I think the answer to this question is ambiguous. The Galataport Project is a governmental, top- down plan, which makes it difficult to influence since governmental plans are not easily changed (as we have learned from the Taksim Pedestrian Project). Furthermore, it is possible that the religious background of the citizens in Tophane is of influence. Many dwellers in Tophane are migrants from the rural Anatolian side of Turkey, and prefer an Islamic conservative lifestyle. This could partly explain their adverse reaction to people who were openly drinking alcohol in public during art gallery openings. As multiple

46 Interview with a Turkish respondent, held on 27-07-2013.

40 respondents explained, many citizens of Tophane are AK-Party supporters and believe that governmental plans will improve the neighbourhood, simply because they are made by the government and AK-Party wants the best for their voters.47 Hence, most of Tophane citizens look forward to the Galataport Project because they believe that they can benefit economically from the expected increase of tourism.

Figure 9: The Galataport Project in Tophane.48

Citizens of Tophane believe that not merely people working in tourism will benefit from the Galataport Project but that the entire neighbourhood will profit from it. It will create jobs within the project and local shop owners can sell their products to tourists. Also, rumours are spreading that the main street will receive new pavement and there are plans for a tram connexion between Tophane and Galata Saray (in Istiklal Caddesi). As one of my respondents says about these plans:

47 Multiple respondents clarified this attitude concerning the Galataport Project in Tophane neighbourhood. Interviews took place on 15-06-2013, 20-06-2013 and 28-06-2013. 48 Source: Kızıl Bayrak (2013) Galataport yeni peşkeş ihalesi hazır accessed on 23-03-2014, http://www.kizilbayrak.net/rss/galataport-yeni-peskes-ihalesi-hazir/.

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It is a very good project, we like this area to be reconstructed. We also want nice pavement and nice homes. I talked with my neighbours, and they are also really looking forward to this project. There will be a shopping area, and luxury hotels and restaurants, etcetera. They are also talking about plans that the tram will go from Tophane all the way up to Galata Saray high school, and that the main road will be inaccessible for cars. And although there are already a lot of hotels, I think everybody will benefit from it. I think it is such a good project that in the end, everybody will take advantage from it. I am very optimistic about it.49

Of course tourism can have positive (economic) effects on a neighbourhood or as Teo and Huang point out, “more income can be generated for the economy if the city centre were not simply a place to work but also a recreational/leisure and retail hub” (1995: 593). Nevertheless, the Galataport Project will also increase gentrification processes in Tophane. Additionally, a negative consequence, due to the Galataport Project, could lead to an increase of polarisation of wealth, and it can also increase the division in social and moral values within this neighbourhood. Mills emphasizes the impact of gentrification by saying that “gentrification will reflect and increase polarisation of wealth in the city and the growth of cultural and economic elite” (Mills 2006: 443). The inauguration of the Istanbul Modern Museum made Tophane turn from a dangerous playground for criminals into a recreational area for tourists. The risk however is, that this new leisure district can experience the same developments which the Tarlabaşɪ and Sulukule neighbourhoods went through, and will become unrecognisable due to the impacts of gentrification. If the proposed renewal projects in Tophane are in line with the gentrification process in other neighbourhoods in Istanbul, it will threaten most members of the existing population in Tophane with displacement (Ahɪska 2011: 3). Therefore we have to question in what way tourism can influence urban planning but also endeavour socially responsible ways of redesigning cities. Urban renewal in Tophane is foremost seen as an opportunity for new economic chances and though urban renewal comes with the risk of forced gentrification, it also offers a potential of a better way of living. However, during the summer of 2013, an interesting twist occurred in this neighbourhood. While the increase in tourism of the

49 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 40 years old, held on 28-06-2013.

42 last ten years caused the neighbourhood to be more safe and open, during the protests the neighbourhood was not safe at all, not even for tourists. Before the protests, in April, I handed out a questionnaire in Tophane including questions about safety. Only 1.6% of the tourists answered that they do not feel safe in Tophane during the day, while 11.1% of the Turks do not feel safe in the neighbourhood during the day. Both groups appreciate Tophane about the same, only 3.3% of the tourists does not like the neighbourhood against 4.7% of the Turks that participated in my research. However, about three months later a hotel owner in Tophane told me the following:

This month supposed to be fully booked, but I received a lot of cancellations. The tourists who do not cancel, I inform about the situation and ask them to cancel their stay, especially if they have kids. This neighbourhood was safe for tourists, but now? If you have a different opinion…This week people were running from the gas to Tophane and they thought they would be safe here, but that was their biggest mistake. They were caught by a group from here and beaten with metal sticks and knifes, it was really bad.50

This shows how quickly the situation in Tophane changed during the summer of 2013 and how strongly citizens protect the cultural values in this neighbourhood. It furthermore emphasizes the difference between the impact of urban renewal in the Taksim area and Tophane neighbourhood. In the Taksim area urban change impacts different social groups because it influences the symbolic meaning of this space, while the impacts in Tophane are more on a local level. This contributes in the explanation why citizens of Tophane seem to be happy with the plans for their neighbourhood and why the case is entirely different at Taksim area. In the next paragraph I will put some more attention on the meaning of the symbols that seems so important on Taksim and how similar symbols are perceived in Tophane.

50 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 40 years old, held on 28-06-2013.

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3.4 Same symbols different meaning

People in Tophane they do not want to leave their house, but the Galataport Project will not influence just a few houses, it will change the whole area. The building contractors of the Galataport will buy all those houses and destroy everything. I think the inhabitants do not know they will lose their house. They know about the project but they do not understand what is happening. I think they trust the AK-Party government and the Beyoğlu municipality. They believe that since they are AK-Party supporters they do not have to leave the neighbourhood, but it will happen. Actually I think they know, but they do not want to know. Of course no one informed any of us about the project. I know because the contractor of the Galataport Project came to our apartment, because he want to buy my house, and the other buildings in my street, so the people living here, they have to know.51

The people of Tophane tend to focus more on the positive sides of urban renewal in their neighbourhood than on the negative consequences. I think a reason for this can be found in the fact the urban renewal plans in this area have more impact on personal life’s and private property and are less related to the symbolic meaning of places, buildings etc., as is the case in Taksim area. Where the streets in Taksim have become political arenas and gained different meanings through time, Tophane is an urban space where economic improvements are acquired. Therefore, when we look at the case of Taksim and the case of Tophane, a division can be made between the “meaning of space”, that is more evident in Taksim, and the “use of space” that is state in Tophane. Or when we use Lefebvre’s three-dimension approach of the production of space, “spatial practice” seems more important for the understanding of Tophane as an urban space while “spaces of representation” seem more applicable for the understanding of the Taksim area (Lefebvre 1991). As described before, the dimension of “spatial practice” defined by Lefebvre (1991) emphasizes the network activities in space that rest on a material basis (built environment) and “spaces of representation” stress how symbolism evokes social norms, values and experiences (in Schmid 2008: 37). In this sense we can speak of different dimensions being more significant for the understanding of different urban spaces, while

51 Interview with a Turkish respondent, held on 27-07-2013.

44 of course both dimensions are necessary for the production of space in its totality (in combination with the earlier described third dimension: representation of space). This analysis of urban space could also contribute to the explanation of the different behaviours of Tophane people and Gezi activists during the summer 2013 protests. Most of the Tophane citizens are Islamic and AK-Party supporters which means that the legacy of Atatürk is not that important for them, nor the secular lifestyle the Republic represents. Besides that, Tophane does not have architectural heritage dating from the Republican time; architectural heritage in this area dates from Ottoman times and does not face demolition. Urban renewal in this neighbourhood has therefore a very different meaning than in Taksim, as appreciation is based on local improvements in the neighbourhood. Hence, Tophane does not represent national (secular) identities of different social groups signified through the urban environment. In addition, Taksim can be seen as the ultimate showcase area of symbolic meaning and different performances, while Tophane is seen by its own citizens as a private neighbourhood. Urban renewal in this area foremost affects the private sphere where it creates opportunities for individuals within this local area. In the next chapter I will take some distance from the case of Taksim and the case of Tophane focussing on what it means for different social groups to live in a neoliberal city.52 How is neoliberalism being perceived at local places by different groups and how does this it influence feelings of citizenship and alienation? What is the role of global world processes like neoliberalisation in relation to the political agenda of the ruling government and how these processes interpreted by citizens of Istanbul?

52 While something as a “neoliberal city”, does not exist, I use this appellation to emphasize the impact of neoliberalism on people’s lives who are living in a city. Neoliberalism as a process cannot occur in an isolated or specific space within a nation but is a global process of which entire nations are subjective to and are actively participating in through their national policies. Therefore, it might be tempting to speak of a “neoliberal world”, however not every nation (it is for example debatable if China has a neoliberal economy [see Lim 2014; Nonini 2008]) in the world is fully participating in the process of neoliberalism which makes the appellation of a neoliberal world, in my opinion too much of a generalisation. Therefore, for the purpose of this thesis, neoliberalism should be seen as a global process but not as world phenomenon that is the economic ideology of every nation.

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Chapter 4 – Localising neoliberalism in Istanbul

4.1 Introduction In the last decade, construction work has become the driving force of Turkey’s economy, stimulated by the goal to host the Olympic games in 2020 and Istanbul receiving the award European Capital of Culture 2010. With the help of social media, different social groups started a resistance campaign against the adverse consequences of these huge urban development projects, simultaneously protecting the meaning of specific spaces as illustrated by the cases of Taksim and Tophane. Furthermore, social groups in Istanbul tried to claim the power to control the meaning of urban spaces and its physical appearance by using narratives like citizenship and alienation as I will show in the next section. Again, this underscores that “space is not the place of conflict, but an object of struggle itself” (Guterman & Lefebvre [1936] in Elden 2004: 184). Urban space can therefore be understood as a “strategic instrument through which participants operate in the context of a global world to confront each other over the meaning of urban space” (Baykan & Hatuka 2010: 49). In this chapter I focus on the participants who operate in a globalised world to define the meaning of local urban spaces. In the chapters 1 to 3, I have shown that urban renewal is a process that is integral to national and global events, and illustrates a discourse of symbolic significance while “urban space also operates as a symbol of power and authority, and a signal of overall dominance in the political and everyday life” (Makrygianni & Tsavdaroglou 2011: 48). Hence, in this chapter I would like to pay attention to what it means for different social groups in Istanbul to live in a neoliberal city that is subjected to global forces and rapid urban change. How are feelings of citizenship and alienation contributing to the localisation of neoliberalism in Istanbul? How are processes of globalisation and localisation influencing feelings of attachment to this metropolis and are citizens still able to call the city their home? The summer of 2013 events in Istanbul can be seen as events of public mass politics in an era of urbanisation in a globalising city. With the analysis of Taksim and Tophane in our minds, my goal is to present urban space in this thesis as “layers of articulation and fragmentation in the political culture of the nation and as instrumental in the power dynamics of the historically significant social processes and groups” (Baykan & Hatuka 2010: 49). In addition to this representation of urban space, I examine in this chapter the

46 relation between urban space and the summer 2013 events further by focussing on urban space and its relation to the city’s future keeping notions of globalisation and neoliberalism in mind. Hence, I think that during the summer of 2013, Istanbul became a field of resistance against the impact of global processes that cause local problems. I will argue in this chapter that claims made during the summer of 2013 about being a citizen of Istanbul are not about rights alone nor merely about cities. The meaning of being a citizen of Istanbul is in this thesis is much more closely related to more radical conceptions of a “collective human right” displayed in the public urban environment of the city (Vradis & Dalakoglou 2011: 87). Or as Lefebvre (1996: 170) emphasizes:

The right to the city, complemented by the right to difference and the right to information, should modify, concretize and make more practical the rights of citizens as an urban citizen and users of multiple services. It would affirm, on the one hand, the rights of users to make known their ideas on the space and time of their activities in the urban area; it would also cover the right to the use of the centre, a privileged place, instead of being dispersed and stuck into ghettos (for workers, immigrants, the “marginal” and even for the “privileged”).53

Inspired by Lefebvre’s spatial analysis of the city, I try to understand what it means for different social groups to live in a neoliberal city. Hence, I will show how the social and historical backgrounds of an urban space are important for the way the city is experienced. These experiences combined with the social and historical background of urban space gives us the possibility to follow the changes in politics and culture in the process of cities becoming global. Events at Taksim Square and the future plans for Tophane demonstrate that the urban environment is closely linked to socio-political processes which are hybrid expressions of political agendas of the current government. In the next section I will focus on the urban renewal projects designed by TOKI, the Social Mass Housing Development Administration of Turkey, and give some reflections on the documentary Ekumenopolis, that centres on TOKI projects.54 I will explain how

53 “Le droit à la ville” by Henri Lefebvre is the original title of the book I refer to here, and was first published in 1968. For the thesis I used the translated version “Writings on cities”, translated by E. Kofman and E. Lebas in 1996. 54 Ekumenopolis: A city without limits, is a documentary film about Istanbul released in 2012. The documentary shows the story of Istanbul and other mega-cities on a neoliberal course to destruction. The official website of the documentary: http://www.ekumenopolis.net/#/en_US.

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TOKI operates and why many social groups in Turkey believe that TOKI housing is not the right answer to the newly expelled homeless people after the demolishing of gecekondu homes (illegal housing).

4.2 The problem of social housing In the last fifty years, Istanbul has grown from one million inhabitants in 1945 to seven million in the 1990s and to twelve-and-half million in 2007 (Renes 2012: 9). Currently, it is not exactly clear how many people are living in Istanbul, but the number approximates at fifteen million. All of these fifteen million people need housing, and when people do not have the means to buy a house, they build their own illegal house in de suburbs of the city. Many gecekondu homes were built by migrants coming from East Turkey in the early 1960s to the 1980s and are now demolished by municipalities as the city is expanding. As a direct consequence of urban redevelopment, enforced gentrification of the inner-city slums is executed and is considered necessary for Istanbul’s global future (Karaman 288: 518). The problem of gecekondu housing is tremendous as it is estimated that half of the people living in the city centre is living in these illegal self-made houses (ibid.). Many of the migrants living in these slums came to Istanbul to work in the manufacturing industry but after the economic crisis of the 1980s many lost their jobs. Before the 1990s gecekondu housing was ignored by the government and some citizens even received a “gecekondu amnesty” that gave them documents and rights to stay periodically in exchange for their votes (Karaman 2008: 521). But due to neoliberalism, Istanbul started to grow fast and needed the space of the inner city areas that at the time was occupied by gecekondu housing. This lead to wide spread gentrification and the eviction of lower class workers to the cities suburbs. As mentioned before, Sulukule, a gecekondu neighbourhood in the district of Küҫükҫekmece, was such an illegal neighbourhood that got completely demolished in order make room for a stadium built for the Olympic games of 2020. As we will learn later, the Olympic games of 2020 will not be held in Istanbul, yet the Olympic stadium was built nevertheless. TOKI, the Social Mass Housing Development Administration is a public agency that is directly responsible to the Prime Ministry and is in charge of most of Istanbul’s urban renewal projects (Aksoy 2012: 100). This agency is responsible for the removal of gecekondu housing and the construction and selling of new housing units. Expelled owners of illegal settlements are relocated by TOKI and offered a new house at a

48 subsidized price. This may seem like a good offer from TOKI but unfortunately occupants of gecekondu neighbourhoods are not able to pay even a subsidized rent, furthermore the new housing units are too far located from the city centre where people earn their money. Many people who are relocated by TOKI return after some time to their old neighbourhood to build a new illegal housing or they move to other places close to the city centre, and these groups are nevertheless vulnerable to homelessness. The government and municipalities claim that one of the main forces behind urban renewal and the removal of gecekondu housing is done out of safety measures because the city faces a major earthquake threat. Many buildings and settlements are considered unsafe and therefore the government tries to create a more sustainable urban environment, improving the lives of the urban poor. However, the earthquake threat is seen by many groups as a marketing strategic opportunity for the government and TOKI to rent houses to stronger economic actors (Kuyucu & Ünsal 2010: 17). In 2007 the head of TOKI declared that half of Istanbul’s houses had to be replaced over the next twenty years and that they would henceforth begin projects in twenty gecekondu housing areas (Aksoy 2012: 100). The demolishing of the Sulukule and Tarlabaşı neighbourhoods was also carried out as a TOKI project (Wiley 2010: 63). Who will carry out the Galataport Project in Tophane is currently not sure, but there are strong indications that this will also be a TOKI project, the same counts for at least part of the Taksim Pedestrian Project.55 Between 2003 and 2008 TOKI was responsible for the construction of 60,000 cheap housing units in the city to replace the gecekondu houses and is projected to build 65,000 more by 2012 (ibid.). TOKI is not popular with the urban poor because it relocates these social groups to places outside of the city centre, far away from schools, supermarkets and healthcare. This creates heightened levels of spatial and socio-economic segregation in the city (Kuyucu & Ünsal 2010: 2). Besides this, it exacerbates the vulnerable position of economic poor social groups, as they are relocated far from possibilities to work and are thus unable to provide in their daily needs. When gecekondu neighbourhoods are removed, new urban spaces are created that are often filled with gated communities. Globalised lifestyles require new kinds of

55 These suggestions are made by multiple respondents, living in Beyoğlu, during interviews in the summer of 2013. It is in Turkey very difficult to get information about governmental urban renewal projects until they are completed. Therefore, at this stage, my information is based on speculations of Turkish local citizens.

49 gentrified urban lives within gated communities accommodated with shopping malls, swimming pools, super markets and other high level services (Keyder 2008: 515-516). Within these communities, neoliberal, globalised lifestyles are being redefined by citizens in gated communities and “the other” is simultaneously redefined by the citizens (Tan 2007: 486). This stimulates social polarisation as different social groups do not interact with each other, or even meet each other in the streets. Since many gated communities are self-sufficient it makes the chances of interaction with other (urban poor, migrants, ethnic groups etc.) groups small, which encourages feelings of fear. In addition, the gated community is considered safe and under control while the outside world becomes unknown and dangerous (ibid.). These physical boundaries are also the case in Tophane. While Tophane is not a gated community, citizens in this neighbourhood prefer not to interact with outsiders, which creates a natural abjection towards each other. During the last decade, neoliberal policies but mostly TOKI have changed the face of Istanbul with the demolishing of gecekondu neighbourhoods, the many shopping malls and other urban renewal projects. The documentary Ekumenopolis: A City Without Limits, was made to portray Istanbul’s urban renewal projects and to problematize them in a understandable way to the public. The documentary shows the social consequences of TOKI projects as they document the eviction of the people living in the Sulukule neighbourhood. While the perspective of the movie is bleak, it is valuable in the understanding of the impacts of neoliberalism on a city from a bottom up perception. The documentary is significant, because it shows what is means for different social groups to live in a neoliberal city and it tries to inform the watcher about social polarisation as a consequence of gentrification. Besides that, the documentary is interesting as being a citizen initiative, attempting to show the negative impacts of neoliberalism on social life in a city being an example of how critique on neoliberalism and gentrification has infiltrated different cultural media. Since the documentary played in multiple theatres in 2012 and was seen by many, it could even have contributed to the sparking of the Gezi protests of 2013, as awareness for the social problems of urban renewal was created. In the next section I will shed some light on how the urban environment functions as a mediator between institutional power and everyday life in the process of becoming a global city and how these processes are interpreted and experienced by the public in daily life.

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4.3 A global city, a local meaning In Turkish the concept “meydan” is in English translated as “square”, which both signifies an open space between structures and buildings and inside the boundaries of a city (Baykan & Hatuka 2010: 51). The difference between a square and a meydan however is that in architecture a square is produced by the grouping of houses around an open space, while a meydan is an open mundane space that brings together structures and spaces that were not designed intentionally as such (ibid.). As squares are designed to be able to control, a meydan is flexible and changeable as it is open to for different representations and for different people’s right to be there (ibid.). Taksim Square should be considered to be a meydan since it is currently dominated by the needs of traffic: even though it was designed as a social space by Henri Prost in 1926, it was never used as such. Taksim Square is basically a crossroads for different kinds of traffic and an entrance to Gezi Park; it is not a space with public furniture that is attractive to spend time at. Taksim has historically been a space where citizens negotiate the transformation of symbols, structures and boundaries that at times overlap, conflict or are loosely defined. Hence, Taksim Square should not solely be considered as a square but as a space were the public and the state have both interest in its symbolic meaning while staging the relation between power and resistance (Low 2000: 204). The fact that the meaning and representation of Taksim is changing over time is not so surprising once we recognize Taksim as a meydan and understand that this space historically was never meant to be a fixed concrete space. Besides that, Taksim is the only historically significant open space in Istanbul that is used as a square by different social groups to gather or to meet for public demonstrations which makes it sensitive for her interpretation according to the (current) use of space. The first time that the meaning of Taksim changed since the meydan Taksim was converted into a public square ensued after the first of May 1977 events. This event is a clear demonstration that Taksim as an urban space, imbeds different layers of meaning that can change through time. This furthermore shows that the meaning of public urban space is not solely created by city planners like Prost, or merely my political agendas, but also by the public’s interpretation of an urban space. The public meaning of an urban space is open for redefinitions even as the physical appearance of a space can change through construction. The public meaning however, and the meaning encouraged and created by city planners and governments through the

51 physical appearance of a space, are not necessarily the same. This is exemplified when feelings of displacement from a space occur, without moving to another space. This can happen when people feel no longer attached to a place because the material form of a space does no longer connects to feelings of a collective identity, memory or history (Gieryn 2000: 481-482). The rapid urban changes in Beyoğlu, of which both Tophane neighbourhood and the Taksim area part, causes feelings of loss and alienation as the emotional meaning of neighbourhoods, buildings and public spaces disappear. These feelings of loss and alienation by several social groups in Istanbul where publically expressed during the 2013 summer protests. One of my respondents, who lives in another city but visits his family in Istanbul multiple times a year, told me the following: “Every time I visit my old neighbourhood (Tophane), something has changed. I feel alienated from the city I was born and raised.”56 Stories like this one are saddening and show some of the negative impacts of neoliberalism and globalisation at a local level, which makes it comprehensible why different social groups in Istanbul choose the streets during the summer of 2013 as a political arena to defend what is meaningful for them in the city. Hence, during these protests claims were made that not solely stretch to the power to control the meaning of urban space but claims were extended to, in words of Lefebvre, “a superior form of right: right to freedom, to individualisation in socialisation, to habitat and to inhabit” (Lefebvre 1996: 173). As said before, when urban space is redesigned by city planners or the government in order to change the meaning or use of space, the “planned meaning” does not always correspond to interpretations of the newly converted space by different social groups. For example, many different social groups interpret the urban renewal projects at Taksim as follows:

By building a shopping mall, a mosque and a residential tower in Taksim the AK-Party is trying to populate its voters in places where they are not voting AKP yet. The AK-Party is trying to make Taksim more attractive for its own voters, because, who is going to buy those new apartments? They are going

56 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 36 years old, held on 27-06-2013.

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to sell it to their own people because they want to change the voting demographics.57

This idea about the Taksim Pedestrian Project, despite of being real or not, is an example of how urban renewal projects can be interpreted by the public. Processes of globalisation and neoliberal political agendas seem to have a very different meaning at a local level. When we understand how citizens of Istanbul experience living in a neoliberal city we can see how notions of citizenship become related with urban renewal projects and how neoliberalism is localised as a problem. As citizenship can be defined as “a bundle of rights (e.g., voting) and obligations (e.g., paying taxes) the fair alteration of these rights are crucial” (Gilbert & Dikeҫ 2008: 261). When citizens feel alienated and negatively subjected to political agendas, entitlements to rights related to citizenship, are easily made. This happened during the summer of 2013, when public claims were made that can be described as the need for a “full participation in society which contains a right to information, to express ideas, to culture, to identity in difference (and equality), and to self-management” (Lefebvre in Gilbert & Dikeҫ 2008: 261). The different layers of the meaning of Taksim have become visible through articulations and symbols that deem instrumental for power dynamics and are significant for social processes and groups in their way of experiencing the city. Thus far, we have seen how the streets of Taksim have become a political stage, while different social groups tried to protect the meaning of space that is important to them. During this struggle awareness was raised towards feelings of citizenship that illustrate the localisation of problems that stretch way beyond the local. In the next section I will continue to focus on how the experience of living in a neoliberal city incluences claims of citizenship and stretch the focus to ideas about the future of Istanbul. In the following quote, one of my respondents emphasises some of the feelings many people in the streets had, during the summer of 2013 and how they are oriented towards local ideas about the future and what it should mean to be a citizen of Turkey.

I think the protests had a lot of impact already because everybody united, there were Gypsies, Kurds, Anti-capitalist Muslims, LGTB’s, Alevis, everybody. The government wants us to be separated, otherwise there would be one big group against the government but we learned during the

57 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 36 years old, held on 27-06-2013.

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protests, we all want the same thing. We want basic rights such as the freedom to choose, for example to drink alcohol or not, and we want to know what is going on in Turkey. For instance, I am ashamed that I did not know about what happened to the Kurds all those years, because the media censored everything.58

Figure 10: A “forum” organised as an act of civil society at the 19th of June 2013,to publically discuss the future of Turkey.59

4.4 A city we have lost As we have seen in this thesis, urban renewal in Istanbul implies a variety of issues and problems at different levels in society. Some are related to the specific meaning and use of a building or space, while other problems are caused by global process that change the face of Istanbul’s landscape. I focussed thus far on the relationship between the meaning of built space, the civic interpretations of this space and on what it means for different social groups to live in a neoliberal city. Henceforth, in this part of my thesis I will pay attention to the facilitating understanding of urban space as a mediator between institutional power and everyday life in the city of Istanbul. Who decides what the city

58 Interview with Turkish respondent, 29 years old, held on 29-06-2013. 59 Photo by Karin Schuitema, Istanbul 2013.

54 should look like and how it will be used? Is there a place for Istanbul’s citizens in the decision making process and is it useful so speak in narratives of citizenship to solve feelings of alienation? Firstly, I think it is necessary to understand that urban renewal can be experienced as a tragedy for different social groups, in order to understand the social and cultural sides of urban change in Istanbul. One of my respondents explained how urban renewal projects cause feelings of despair when the city around you is changing extremely fast and you cannot control it in any way. He said:

The city is expanding in a cancerous way. The government plans all those construction projects at the same moment as a sort of distraction, because you cannot protest at all places at once. You do not know how to fight it. There are laws for construction projects and heritage preservation, but you can bend them in any way you like. 60

Modernisation and development are motives that are often used by the current government to promote urban renewal projects in the city while national goals as hosting the Olympic games in 2020 are also meant to increase tourism (Aksoy 2012). The third Bosporus bridge, the Olympic stadium, the third airport, the Marmaray (a train connection between the European and Asian side under the Bosporus), but also different neighbourhood projects such as the Pedestrian Project in Taksim and the Galataport Project in Tophane, are all examples of development projects designed to make Istanbul a modern and knowledgeable world city and are almost all under construction at the same time. However, social exclusion from these projects and an increase of police violence against the social groups that tried to protect areas meaningful to them, reflect how “the way” to modernisation is perceived in varying ways. When we talk about urban renewal, ideas of modernisation seem inextricably connected with it since urban renewal deals with what the future urban environment should look like. Importantly, when we talk about modernisation, we must keep in mind that modernisation is not a teleological, linear process (Ferguson 1999: 13). Hence, while globalisation is known for interlinking the world and can be associated with a modern world, globalisation and modernisation in the case of Istanbul also means differentiating

60 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 36 years old, held on 27-06-2013.

55 the world (Inda & Rosaldo 2008: 4; Ferguson 1999: 243). Despite the fact that processes of modernisation and globalisation create new inequalities, it also creates new ways of connecting places and ignoring them as we can clearly identify in the urban environment of Istanbul (Ferguson 1999: 243). In addition, as different social groups feel alienated or displaced from a space they once felt attached to, other groups create new meanings and feelings of attachment towards this “new” urban space. During the summer of 2013, Istanbul’s streets functioned as channels of communication as feelings of inequality and abjection from the urban space of Istanbul increased. The streets transferred messages of resistance throughout the city, as part of a network that connected the distant neighbourhoods of Istanbul, but also linked buildings that brought the resistance into the private spaces of the city (Makrygianni & Tsavdaroglou 2012: 46). Despite police brutality against protesters, different social groups tried to protect those spaces in the city that are meaningful for them using narratives of alienation and citizenship. I wonder however, how useful these narratives are, in a world that is subjective to processes of neoliberalism and globalisation. While the Turkish government has plans which hold Westernisation and modernisation high on its agenda, the public seems to be stuck using narratives concerning nostalgic feelings for the past, urging for a position in which they experience democratic influence in the decision making process through citizenship. This defines the complex situation of the urban renewal projects in Istanbul. As governmental urban policies are dealing with ambitions and plans for the city’s future, many public actors cherish a shared memory, identity and attachment to an urban space that has its roots in the past. In spite of these future plans, the current government also struggles with the way many public actors are using the acquired freedoms and possibilities that come with development. Currently, public resistance is also expressed through social media exhibiting feelings of discontent against the government to a worldwide audience. This lead on March 20, 2014 to the national blockage of the social media site Twitter and seven days later to the ban on Youtube. As a reaction to the ban on these websites, international concern was expresses because it is in contradiction to the country’s international human rights commitments.61 Furthermore, questions can be raised as to how the restriction to the freedom of expression correspond with ambitions

61 UN news centre (2014) UN Human Rights office concerned over Turkey’s Twitter ban accessed on 26-03- 2014, http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47431#.UzK85YVQSZR.

56 to modernize and the ambition to become a member of the European Union, in which censorship is strongly disapproved. Ideas of what it means to be a modern nation and how to create a significant economic position in the world seem not unequivocal. This corresponds with Ferguson’s (1999: 13) statement on the modernisation narrative, when he calls it a myth, an illusion, and often even a lie, as it is not something static, or even the opposite of being backward. Once we understand that notions about modernisation and development are contested factors that are intertwined with neoliberalism in Istanbul, it helps to understand the full complexity of urban change at a global level. At a local level, urban change is also contested as different social groups feel differently about urban change, which is illustrated with the case of Tophane and Taksim. The question is therefore, is it useful for resisting social groups to speak in terms of citizenship when citizens do not seem to experience urban renewal in Istanbul in the same way? Besides that, the government is not the only factor in the decision making process, which makes it a question how much an increase in citizenship could influence urban renewal projects any way. As stated before, the government is subjected to global forces, such as neoliberalism in which it has to operate: hence, urban change is not the governments imperative alone. However, while feelings of alienation from the urban environment in most cases are caused by the experience of loss when memories, identities, or histories that are represented through the urban space, disappear, the suggestion could be made, that the government takes these feelings of urban meaning into account, as they move within the global system of urban renewal.

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Chapter 5 – Conclusion: Small places, large issues

5.1 Introduction While there are key differences to be found in the dynamics of space and contested meaning in Taksim and Tophane, contested meaning of space and issues of gentrification can be seen around the world. For instance, Syntagma Square and the area around Omonia Square (Greece) shows similar dynamics (Dalakoglou 2012). It is worth emphasizing, that urban space has always been the domain of politics as it is the arena for public discourse and expressions of discontent. The analysis of the case of Taksim and Tophane show us how different types of urban space are different sites of contested meaning and produce and reflect different claims. Hence, culturally significant urban spaces tend to be a forum for working out political, economic and social conflicts (Low 2000: 201). Furthermore, we have seen how urban spaces function as stages for politically motivated artistic expressions, designed to represent the designers’ and users’ objectives and social ideas. At the same time, public urban spaces are commodities produced by governments in exchange for political or economic power and support (ibid.). In order to further understand what the cases of Taksim and Tophane can teach us about the politics of symbolic representation in urban renewal projects, let us return to the research questions guiding this thesis.

1) How are politics and symbolism interconnected and represented in urban renewal projects in Istanbul? 2) How is architectural heritage being integrated and represented in urban renewal projects, and what does this mean for different social groups in Istanbul? 3) In what way do meaning of urban space influence the experience of urban space for different social groups in Istanbul?

The answers to these research questions is, as we have seen, contested and intertwined with many other different issues and global processes. However, to summarize the answer to the first research question, we can see that case of Taksim demonstrates how political histories are embedded in the present urban environment of Istanbul through architectural symbols and historic events connected to an urban space. These histories and architectural symbols represent different values, memories, identities and result in a specific place attachment between the city’s citizens and urban space. Once the meaning

58 of an urban space or a neighbourhood is changing through urban renewal projects, feelings of alienation or displacement can occur, without moving to another urban space (Gieryn 2000). Hence, feelings of alienation can take place because a built urban environment embodies the material form of the ineffable or invisible, providing a durable legible architectural memory (Radcliffe & Westwood 1996 in Gieryn 2000: 481- 482). In addition, the urban environment of Istanbul articulates different political agendas driven by globalisation and neoliberalism, which signifies identities and histories that are represented through symbols. These symbols can be emphasized or removed during urban renewal projects, in order to influence the meaning or use of space in accordance to a specific political agenda concerning urban change. This emphasizes that “space is not the space for conflict, but an object of struggle itself” (Guterman & Lefebvre [1936] in Elden 2004: 184). The second research question defines the use and integration of architectural heritage in Istanbul. To understand how architectural heritage is being used and integrated within urban renewal projects, it is necessary to emphasize once again that heritage “means different things to different people, even within the same culture”, as I also emphasized in chapter 2 (Gillman 2006: 65). Furthermore, I think the definition of heritage given by Smith (2006) is useful, to understand the role of heritage in Istanbul’s urban renewal projects as being valuable by having a symbolic meaning. While I am aware that it not common to give a definition in a conclusion, my defence is, that I think it is useful in the understanding of the answer to the second research question.

“Heritage is not a ‘thing’, it is not a ‘site’, building or other material object. Rather, heritage is what goes on at these sites, and while this does not mean that a sense of physical place is not important for these activities or plays some role in them, the physical place or ‘site’ is not the full story of what heritage may be. Heritage is a cultural process that engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present, and the sites themselves are cultural tools that can facilitate, but are not necessarily vital for this process.” (Smith 2006: 44)

This definition of heritage puts emphasis on the symbolic meaning of a space, created through acts of remembering that are important for the present, as is clearly the case for the Taksim area when we look at the architectural meaning of this area.

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Not everything or every event from history is considered heritage. Hence, “parts from history are selected in the present because they have a contemporary purpose, be they economic, cultural, political or social” (Loulanski 2006: 212). Nostalgic feelings for the past and a collective memory contribute and legitimise the selecting process of which elements from the past are worth to preserve. Therefore, “those who are considered to have the control over the selecting process of our heritage have the ability to command the present and the future” (Schackel 2001: 665). This approach towards the use of heritage and history is clearly portrayed in the case of Taksim, or to link these ideas to one of Lefebvre’s theories, “the state organizes space in according to their specific requirements” (1991: 85). My fieldwork showed that, the manner of integrating policies concerning architectural heritage in urban renewal projects is implemented in a way they contribute to the government’s beliefs in what is good or important for Istanbul. However, there are different beliefs within different social groups about this way of implementing heritage policies, which is not surprising since heritage means different things to different people. To answer the third research question we have to look at how the meaning of urban space influences the experience of urban space for different social groups in Istanbul. My fieldwork in Taksim has shown that the symbolic meaning of urban space is very significant because of different social groups’ emotional attachment. In addition, when the symbolic meaning of an urban environment is changed by urban renewal projects, emotional attachment to a place is disrupted and can lead to public resistance. As citizens try to protect what is meaningful for them in the city, political agendas driven by neoliberal forces can be in tension with them. Therefore many of my respondents emphasised that they would like to have influence on the decision making process concerning urban change. For example, as one of my respondents told me about the summer of 2013 protests:

That the Gezi protests happened was not like a sudden explosion. I had a feeling that this would happen for many years. There are just many, many things, I cannot count them. There are so many things that caused this to happened. But we were always quiet, we never had the courage to criticise the government, but at one point you feel you are going to explode. And then the Gezi Park projects where planned. But that was not the only reason, it was just the final reason. But people abroad believe that it is only

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about the trees in a park, can you believe it? That it is just about some trees... 62

During this interview my respondent emphasized how the Gezi protests were the result of an ongoing process concerning urban renewal projects and the lack of influence on these projects that caused feelings of alienation. However, the government is not the only actor in the decision making process since they are within a dynamic of neoliberal and global processes. Besides that, not every social group feels the same about urban change as we can see in the comparison between the contrary reactions to urban renewal in the cases of Taksim and Tophane. Furthermore, by studying the case of Taksim we have seen that through the changing of the meaning of an urban space, the attractiveness of this space becomes less for certain social groups, for example Kemalists, while it will becomes more attractive for other groups, such as tourists and Muslims. In the case of Tophane we can see that the Galataport Project most likely will change the character of the neighbourhood, which implies a different (more open) use and a different experience of its citizens when it is no longer a controlled “privatized” environment. Therefore, the meaning of an urban space definitely influences the experience and use of urban space for different social groups in Istanbul. In the next section I will problematize urban renewal in Istanbul once more and propose some suggestions about how to deal with urban change in a more considered way and I will make some recommendations for further research.

5.2 Concluding Taksim & Tophane: A sense of belonging The fact that state led urban renewal projects exist is not considered as the real problem of Istanbul’s urban environment by many social groups. However, an outstanding issue of these projects involves the lack of any form of transparency and participation of citizens, community groups and non-governmental organisations (NGO's) in the decision making process (Karaman: 2008: 520). This causes feelings of anxiety as urban changes create a serious risk of forced gentrification as we have seen in the case of Tophane, and by examples from Sulukule and Tarlabaşı neighbourhoods. Furthermore, as a result of urban renewal projects feelings of alienation occur when urban space does no longer signifies certain identities, memories and histories as is the case for Taksim area.

62 Interview with a Turkish respondent, 40 years old, held on 26-07-2013.

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Many citizens claim that urban renewal projects are not designed to improve inhabitants’ living conditions but merely focus on economic or political goals. For example, the proposed Galataport Project in Tophane neighbourhood will threaten most of its people with displacement as tourism will increase (Ahɪska 2011: 3). As a response to urban renewal, different social groups in Istanbul occupied the streets during the summer of 2013 to claim alternative ways of redesigning the city that in their opinion can solely be achieved through the participatory engagement of different voices in the public sphere. In addition, the following quote is coming from the Taksim Platform website, one of the leading public resistance groups fighting for the preservation of Gezi Park and Taksim Square.63

What Do We Want?

We want transparency and the opportunity for input in the redesign of Taksim Square. Urban development plans should take into consideration those residing in nearby neighbourhoods as well as those who work in and visit the area. Transportation projects should not be planned by decree from above, nor in isolation from their environment and residents. The latest holistic approaches need to be taken into consideration during the design of transportation systems, viewing them as part of the overall urban fabric.

As the highest-profile and most symbolic square in Turkey, Taksim Square means many things to people of many different walks of life. Democratic participation in deciding how to design and use this public space is just as important as it is in rewriting the Constitution.

The days of reckless urban development and planning without public consultation are long over. It’s time to do things differently. Let’s start with Taksim Square. Let’s join together and make this an example of how city

63 On June 12, 2014, the first hearing in the trial of 26 members of the Taksim Solidarity Platform took place, a public resistance group similar to the Taksim Platform group. The accused members – including, doctors, architects and engineers – face 13 years in prison for organising “illegal protests” through social media. The next hearing will be at Oktober 21, 2014. Source: Hurriyet Daily News (2014) Turkey stages “show trial” of Taksim Solidarity Platform members for “organising” Gezi protests accessed on 12-06- 2014,http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-stages-show-trial-of-taksim-solidarity-platform- members-for-organizing-gezi-protests.aspx?pageID=238&nID=67678&NewsCatID=339.

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officials can successfully work in conjunction with civic groups and citizens for a better designed city space for everyone.

We call upon the city officials of Istanbul to serve their constituents in a transparent and democratic way.

Taksim belongs to all of us!64

These public demands clearly ask for a voice in the decision making process concerning urban renewal as they emphasize that different social groups, like residents, users of public urban space and citizens should take part in a transparent and democratic way of redesigning the city. They conclude with the phrase “Taksim belongs to all of us”, which is used as manner to legitimize their demands. Hence, because Taksim belongs to all of us, therefore we (residents, users of space, civic groups and citizens) should have the democratic right to work together with the government to design city space for everyone. I wonder however, why Taksim belongs to “all of us”, and who “all of us” are? And does the rest of the city belong to “all of us” too? To conclude this thesis, I think it is necessary to raise and answer these questions to get a clear understanding of the true heart of the problem I hope has been addressed. In order to answer these questions, we need to pause at the word “belonging” and try to understand what it means to belong somewhere. The notion of autochthony plays an important role in the understanding of belonging, as some sort of primordial claim, “how can one belong more if one is born from the soil itself” (Geschiere 2011: 175)? Hence, autochthony literally means “born from the soil” and implies a basic form of belonging for citizenship (Geschiere 2011: 176). Depending on its context, autochthony demands a purification of national citizenship and an exclusion of strangers, while the exact definition of who belongs and who is excluded can change easily (ibid.). While notions of belonging can be considered a paradox of processes of globalisation, ideas of local belonging strike deep emotional feelings in a global and neoliberal world (ibid.). The case of Taksim and Tophane portrays these feelings of belonging as citizens use their identity to press claims – alone or in alliance with other groups-at the nation. In addition, notions of belonging create strong ethical feelings of entitlement to resources that are seen as the group’s heritage (ibid.).

64 Taksim Platformu (2011) Petition accessed on 05-05-2014, http://www.taksimplatformu.com/english.php.

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I think the phrase “Taksim belongs to all of us” brings us to the core problem concerning urban renewal in Istanbul, because it refers to ethical feelings of entitlement over urban space by social groups who consider (identify) themselves to be “from Istanbul’s soil”. This means that these groups “really” belong to the city and therefore have the right to press claims, undermining government agendas. This analysis emphasises the contradictory relation between the government and citizen as feelings of belonging produces feelings of entitlement while at the same time autochthone citizens seek protection by the government, often at the cost of other citizens, in times of distress. This reflects the complexity of political decisions concerning urban renewal. While globalisation and neoliberalism are processes that are used by the government to stimulate urban renewal projects from a top-down level, at a local level feelings of belonging produce bottom-up claims. To return to the questions I raised earlier in this section, Taksim does not belong to “all of us”. If Taksim belongs to “all of us”, the government would be part of “us” and have a legitimate right to redesign it. This thesis has shown that the “us” Taksim belongs to, refers to different social groups that authentically belonging to certain spaces in the city and refers to feelings of attachment. Hence, those social groups who do not belong to certain spaces in the city should be excluded from the decision making process of redesigning it. Taksim as a public urban space, signifies symbols that are important for specific social groups, and it belongs to those citizens that are historically related to the space itself or its symbols and it does certainly not belong to everyone. Tophane on the other hand belongs to the people who live there for many generations while “strangers” like tourists and newcomers are excluded from rights over the area. The fact that these people live in Tophane as autochthone citizens gives them, in their opinion, rights such as protection by the government to keep living there in future. However, accepting these claims to the city as natural and self-evident does not make them reality as they do show the complexities and contestation involved. Istanbul’s urban change issues, as I addressed in this thesis, are causing serious problems that not merely threaten the city’s future but also threatens the future of the people living in it through evictions. This is the reason why I chose to do research in this particular city because it embodies the issue of what a neoliberal city is all about, in a most dramatic way. Hence, it is not surprising that a Turkish version of “a right to the city struggle” as defined by Lefebvre (1991) occurred during the summer of 2013.

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When we take another look at the Taksim Platform petition, we can see that the demand for democratic participation in the decision making process is emphasize twice as they even ask for the rewriting of the constitution. Whereas the current government is publically accused of being authoritarian, nostalgic feelings for the Republican past are often presented as solution for a democratic future. However, while Atatürk can serve as an icon of a Westernized, secular, bourgeois lifestyle, Kemalism can also be accused of being an oppressive ideology to religious beliefs, cultural identities, and political and economic freedoms of the Turkish citizenry (Özyürek 2004: 379-386). Therefore, “Any ideology may claim to be ‘good’ and ‘right’, but if an ideology claims to have monopoly over the ‘truth’ and holds a constitutional superiority over other sets of ideas and ideologies, it cannot claim to be compatible with democracy, which essentially requires pluralism of views that compete with one another” (Dağı 2012: 32). While I do not want to suggest what is right or wrong about the decision making process in Istanbul concerning urban renewal, I do want to emphasize how the public is using different narratives to claim a part of the city they belong to: claiming a public space, a neighbourhood, a building or a park, etc. For the purpose of critical urban thinking, it is necessary to be aware of these claims and their relationship with (contested) governmental politics in order to understand urban renewal, not solely from a global perspective but also from a local point of view. While working on this thesis, I became aware that many fields concerning urban renewal in Istanbul are still unexplored yet so important at many different levels. Turkey has now come to a point where research should be done about what it means to be a true secular modern democracy and how that is implemented and experienced in city- life. In addition, during the Gezi protests feelings of polarisation within society were emphasized and police violence experienced that opened a whole new field of research in Istanbul. As the public is defending what is important to them in the city, the suggestion could be made that the government starts searching for ways to respond to the voices of its citizens and think about ways to deal with the fact that Istanbul’s citizens belong in the city, despite global processes and political agendas. The conclusion might be that it makes not much sense to either hold the government or the public responsible for the contested situation Istanbul is currently in. Both parties are tied by different agendas and feelings while being pushed by processes of globalisation and neoliberalism that no single body or group is able to control. Nevertheless, the government and its

65 citizens are inextricably intertwined which makes it crucial to figure out ways to build a sustainable urban space together.

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Literature Ahɪska, M. (2011) ‘Monsters that remember: Tracing the story of the workers’ monument in Tophane, Istanbul’ Redthread 3: 1-23.

Aksoy, A. (2012) ‘Riding the New Storm: New Istanbul’ City: Analysis of Urban Trends, Culture, Theory, Policy, Action 16-1-2: 93-111.

Ammeraal, E. (2012) ‘Stadsvernieuwing in Istanbul, Waterpijpcafes en kunstexposities in Tophane’ Geografie 10: 32-33.

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